


Battle Fatigue

by bonzai_bunny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, Gen, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:18:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2228751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonzai_bunny/pseuds/bonzai_bunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve thought he was doing okay. Things weren't going great, but they were fine, manageable even, and then suddenly they weren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle Fatigue

**Author's Note:**

> A tiny bit of this was beta'd by my friend teaandcharcoal. The rest of the mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Uh, I started writing this a few months after the Avengers came out, so there's quite a bit of canon divergence. It was for a kink meme prompt, but I feel like it doesn't exactly fit the parameters of the prompt anymore. I'm mostly just tired of it and glad it's done and I hope y'all like it.
> 
> Oh and as a disclaimer, I don't know how to treat any mental illness so everything with the psychiatrist should be taken with a grain of salt.

It sort of caught up to him in slow motion; it was a heavy, sluggish weariness that settled in his bones mid-schwarma. Steve assumed it was mostly the adrenaline wearing off, because he had fought long and hard, had been wounded, and he had just nearly fallen asleep in his food. He couldn't concentrate for the life of him on what his teammate’s short conversations had been about. He figured it must have been important, but it took too much effort just to prop his head up on his hand. 

When they had all finished, he lingered, not really sure what he was supposed to be doing. Thor had gone back to SHIELD, where Loki was being held in custody. Tony went off with Bruce. Steve assumed Clint and Natasha had left too, until he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"Do you have any place to be, Cap?" It was Natasha, who seemed worn and concerned. He didn't know how he hadn't heard her approaching.

"Yeah, I've got an apartment. I'll make it," He grunted, being purposefully vague. He had to get to Brooklyn, but he knew it would be nigh impossible to get a cab anywhere near the battle sight and he didn't want to prevent anyone who actually needed it from using one. She seemed dubious, but nodded,

"Alright. Fury wants us to debrief at noon tomorrow. An agent will pick you up."

"Okay."

She gave his shoulder a little pat and limped off in the other direction, where Clint was waiting for her, and Steve sighed before taking the long walk home.

(About an hour into his walk, he decided it would be alright to use the subway and his legs had never been more grateful in his life.)

It was midnight by the time he got home and he really wanted to just collapse onto the couch, but he lumbered into his bedroom and yanked off his boots before pausing at his suit. The burn from the Chitari blast had mostly healed, but it had melted the fabric of his suit to his skin. He knew it would just get worse if he left it on and with a wince he ripped off the tattered front, taking his skin off with it. He didn't have too many first aid supplies, but he found some rubbing alcohol and a big gauze bandage to put on it and figured it would be okay. His healing would take care of the rest.

After he got rid of his clothes, he crawled into bed and slept almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

_They trudged through the remains of a bombed out village. The place was still smoldering, black and burnt over the red snow. The siren must not have gone off in time, because the streets were littered with bodies. It was street after street of people lying where they must have tried to flee. Steve brought a hand to his mouth, partially because of his dismay, partially because the stench was so great he felt like he would vomit. Bucky clasped a hand on his shoulder, somber, with eyes reflecting something that Steve didn’t recognize anymore._

_“You couldn’t have saved them Steve.”_

_“I know,” Steve said softly as though to prove it to himself, “I know.”_

Steve woke up about eight hours later but he didn't want to get out of bed. He still had four hours before the debriefing and he wasn't looking forward to it.That sludgy weariness had increased since last night and seemed to pin him to the mattress. The bed was warm and the weariness was cold so he laid there for two hours before motivating himself to move.

He went to the bathroom, noting briefly that the burn first aid from last night had healed. But he looked foggy and tired so he decided to take a shower. Hot showers were less of a luxury that they had been in the forties and he welcomed the hot water against his skin. In some other circumstance, it might have woken him up a little, but this was only superficial. His limbs still felt like lead, like they were dragging him towards the center of the space. He was so tired that he just obeyed, letting the water drip over his head with his legs crisscrossed on the tiled bottom of the little shower stall.

He pushed his palms against his eyes as terrible thoughts slowly assaulted him, thoughts of Bucky, thoughts of Peggy, of Howard and Tony, and every awful thing of his goddamn awful life.

He had been afraid to think it ever since he had woken up, but he shouldn't be here. He should have died when he crashed that plane into the ice. And for a brief moment, he wished he had died. He didn't _want_ to be here.

And he stayed this way for a long time, his palms against his eyes, breathing in these terrible thoughts, at the bottom of this tiny shower in this century that he didn't belong in. Steve let the water run cold and he nearly jumped out of his skin when the doorbell rang. He had completely forgotten about the about the agent who was supposed to pick him up. He hurried out of the shower, told himself that he would leave his pity-party right there, and miraculously got himself somewhat presentable in five minutes. He didn't leave the agent outside the entire time and beckoned her in with his bathrobe on, feeling guilty, and asked her to please wait.

Steve knew that his mother would have hollered his ear off for treating a dame—a woman, for treating a woman that way. When he finally emerged in some familiar khakis and a button down shirt, her eyes roamed over him appreciatively, and it made his skin prickle. It wasn't that she wasn't pretty, she was, but it—it just wasn't the time. He rode to the SHIELD headquarters with her in silence.

\--o0o--

He was listless through the entire meeting. He understood the basics of it; Fury was going to let them live their own lives and not have to check in with SHIELD until they were truly needed again. Thor was going to take the cube back to Asgard as soon as possible along with Loki, where they both belonged. Steve thought good riddance about both the cube, which had taken his entire life away from him, and Loki who had hurt so many people.

(Steve did listen when Fury plaintively announced the estimated dead so far and it made Steve feel sick, his chest feel tight, because he knew he no matter how hard he had fought, he had failed a lot of people.)

Tony made some joke about him, something about him finally being able to retire to an old folks home now that this was over, but Steve was honestly too tired to try and be indignant. He just didn't care. The SHIELD engineers (and Tony and Bruce) were still working on a way to keep the cube stable in a way that would allow Thor and Loki to get back home so there was nothing else to be done.

Steve left the tinkering and physics to them and walked home alone. He liked walking because it usually cleared his head and it allowed him to observe this once familiar place, but on the way back a car backfired and he took off running in the direction of the noise. He had to take deep breaths to calm himself down when he realized what had happened and it took him a very long time to shake off the sudden panic and battle-readiness.

It was okay, he told himself. The war had been won and he was in the twenty first century. It was just someone's car. Not gunfire. Nobody was in danger.

He began to feel the tendrils of embarrassment when he got home and he was grateful that none of his new team had been around to see it. Once he had shaken off the gross feeling that that scene had left him with he figured he might as well go about with the rest of his day.

In one of his dreams that night, he dreamed about the ice again. It was a consistent feature of his nightmares now that he was awake, but he never recalled them being so vivid. He felt his panic again, because no matter how much he put on a brave face he had been terrified to die. There was the deafening _crunch_ as the plane hit the ice. It shook Steve and the vessel and sometimes Steve still felt it shaking in his bones. He had expected the plane to explode on impact and was unprepared for the chill. This was the worst part, because it seemed to come so slowly.

Steve was trapped; the body of the plane was warped around him and the freezing water slowly made it past his knees, his chest, and then his neck.

At that point, he had resigned to his fate. He was calm, accepting, and still felt this way when he was underwater. He had held his breath on instinct. No matter what he couldn't bring himself to gulp the water in his lungs and for a moment there was that panic again: the terror of trying to breathe when there was no air. Steve thought it would be like an asthma attack, but it wasn't really. Eventually, this icy mistress covered his eyes and he passed out.

When Steve woke up from all of his nightmares, he lay still for a very long time, convincing himself that he was really awake. It was still the twenty first century, he thought. He was still in his little time capsule of an apartment. And he repeated these words to himself until he felt like he almost believed them.

\--o0o--

It took a full day for Tony and Bruce to do their thing. Steve spent some time volunteering, helping with the aftermath in the meantime. He couldn’t help dig people out of the rubble like he wanted to because it would draw too much attention to himself but he did help clean up some shops and help them get back on their feet. He brought a hat and sunglasses to disguise himself because he liked being unnoticeable, after all of this. He needed to be Steve Rogers right now, not Captain America.

It was peaceful for a while, but while sweeping the debris from one area, he caught scent of a bakery nearby and he thought of that time he and the Commandos were stationed near an occupied French town. The people had tried to go along with their daily lives, including a bakery that was doing its best to continue to bake bread with the shortening supplies. The smell of bread lingered with the inescapable pungent scent of smoke and death that followed Steve everywhere in the war.

It was a daily reminder that they could all be dead at a moment's notice from an unexpected air raid. Steve never found out if that little town had made it through the war or not.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Steve blinked, shaken out of his memories and looked at a woman who had cautiously approached him. She pointed to his broom uneasily and he looked down and saw that he had splintered the handle in his hands. His cheeks warmed at the sight.

"Uh, I guess I should take a break, huh?" He laughed but the embarrassment was there. He gingerly set the broken broom against a wall and set off in the other direction, cheeks still aflame. How long had he been standing there, staring off into nothing, while his memories washed over him? He ignored the bits of wood still embedded into his hands and after some hesitation he decided to just go home. He had done enough for the day.

The subway ride was as empty as it had been since he was awake. It was full of people but the people weren't there, not really, all buried into their technology or dreams.

When Steve got home, he didn't feel like doing much and just made himself some more food. He sketched out his memories, which he hadn't done since he woke up. He tried Bucky's profile, the curls in Peggy's hair, the beautiful dome of a church he saw overseas. It didn't turn out right either, so he put his sketchbook away and watched some television.

He wasn't used to doing this; television hadn't really caught on until after the ice and he wouldn't have been able to afford one anyway. He was told that most people had one now and watching the evening news was a ritual in many households.

But the television left him with a bitter taste in his mouth and he quit halfway through the program.

Against his best intentions, he fell back down into that pit of misery he felt the previous day. When he took a shower he huddled at the bottom of the stall again, despairing over how everything was gone and how he wanted to be gone with it.

He thought about the things he missed. Like when his Ma carefully brushed a cool cloth against his forehead when he was sick. When Bucky took him to Coney Island and convinced him to try one of the coasters and he got sick. He remembered the crunch of a candy apple and the salty smell of the ocean. He remembered the sharp wit of Howard Stark and how sometimes he and Tony had a similar smile. He remembered Peggy’s perfume, how he could smell it when he finally kissed her and he wanted it all _back_.

When he finally pulled himself back up and finished washing, he went to bed. He only had one dream that night. It was of Bucky.

He felt the icy chill of the Alps air rushing past him and it mingled with the heat of his terror as Bucky fell, and fell, and fell.

Steve woke up, tears wetting his face, and he decided that he wasn't going to sleep anymore that night.

\--o0o--

It was a good thing Steve was a super solider or else he might have had a hard time hiding how tired he was to the rest of his teammates. They called him and told him that Tony and Bruce had fixed that thing and Thor and Loki could go home now.

When Steve arrived at the park, he shrugged off his animosity at the cube and gave Thor a pat on the back for farewell and Thor gave him a bodily hug in return. The rest of the Avengers also moved in to wish Thor well and he hugged them all too (he evidently wasn't too fond of handshakes and Loki glared at all of them while this happened).

Finally, they got the Tesseract ready, there was a flash of blue light and in a blink Thor and Loki were gone. It didn't settle any of the uneasiness Steve felt at the cube, but it was gone, back where it belonged. Good riddance.

Steve shook hands with everybody else, including Stark, and bid them all farewell. He noticed that he was the only one leaving by himself, but well, that was how his life was in this century. He didn't expect anything to change just because they fought together. They all had their own lives and Steve didn't know them very well anyway. He would find his way eventually, he was certain. It was just hard to get his bearings straight because the world had gone spinning without him and wasn't sure where his feet would land.

He rode the solitary ride back home and once again found himself looking over the files SHIELD gave him about his old colleagues. He wanted to talk to Peggy, but he didn't want to be a bother either. He didn't want to go dredging up the past when she had probably moved on. On a stupid impulse, he had called her once, just to hear her voice (still recognizable but shaky and wheezy with age) and he wasn't able to say anything. He hung up without a word and he wondered if this would ever get better.

\--o0o--

After all of this, Steve tried to get a routine settled in again. He did a lot of volunteering, a lot of working out, a few SHIELD missions and a lot of visiting old-new places. It was nice meeting new people, the volunteers, who cared about the same things he did. He tried some new cuisine with mixed results. He tried to get out of the city every now and then. He had an awful time getting out of bed sometimes, when he could actually sleep, but that was neither here nor there.

(His nightmares were increasing with alarming frequency. It was probably why he tried to sleep so much, to try and find peace within his mind, but his mind wouldn't give it to him.)

He found himself spacing out more and more too, but he wasn't sure what to do about that. It happened when he smelled certain things or when he heard particular sounds or they didn't seem to have a probable cause at all. It happened sometimes when he was volunteering and sometimes it happened long enough that the volunteers stared at him and it made him sort of angry and embarrassed. Most of the time they were brief instances and he was thankful for that.

He made friends with the volunteers. They were mostly middle-aged and they all commended him for spending so much of his youthful time with them. He didn't really want to tell them that he had nothing else, but he figured he should at least help other people. They were slowly helping the city recover and that was good. And he was glad that they didn't really comment on his "episodes" but there was one moment where he had been startled by something moving quickly out of the corner of his eye (which he hated to admit was happening more and more lately) and an older man had approached him carefully.

"You a soldier, Steve?"

Steve took a longer time to answer than he would have liked, mentally trying to push away the panic that had blossomed in his chest.

"Yes, sir," he choked out eventually, “I was,” and this was so stupid, it was just a piece of plastic moving in the breeze, he had no reason to be afraid. The man handed him a card with the contact information and the address of a local veteran’s affairs office,

"You should go and talk to the people at this office. My son came home from Afghanistan and he was...different. It might take a while to get an appointment, but it helps to talk to someone about what you're going through."

"Uh, thank you sir. I'll keep that in mind."

He wasn't sure how to respond to this but the man genially patted him on the shoulder and got back to work. Steve stared at the card for a little while, before tucking it into this pocket. Alright, he thought, no shame in asking for help when he needed it.

\--o0o--

He didn’t have all the criteria to make an appointment. His enlistment papers, for example, had been lost to time. He wasn’t really sure that they would believe the date on them anyway (and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed let that be known or not). He was told that even if he did make an appointment, the waiting time would be at least two months. He decided to just forget about it.

\--o0o--

Oddly, about three months since the invasion, Steve got a phone call at four in the morning from Tony Stark of all people.

“Hello?” He grunted into the phone.

“Cap? Hey, glad you’re awake.”

Steve stared at the phone blearily in disbelief. “Mr. Stark? It—it’s four am.”

“Call me Tony and—is it? Shit. Well, since you’re already awake, are you doing anything important tomorrow?”

Steve rubbed at his eyes, still not believing that he was having this conversation and yawned, “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Well you’re moving in with us at Stark Tower. I’ve got guys coming to get your stuff at three. Is that a good time?”

“Wait.” Steve sat up, suddenly more awake, “Who says I want to move in with you? And what do you mean us?”

“Well, Bruce is here, he never really left. And the assassins stop by and have their own rooms and stuff, though I’m not sure they’re not just spying on us for SHIELD. And there’s Pepper and me, who’s asking you to join the slumber party. Besides, isn’t it just a little convenient to have our superhero boy band in one place?”

Steve wanted to say that he could very well say ‘no,’ that he wasn’t going to be manhandled into a place where he didn’t want to be and Tony had no right to try and move his stuff without him. But he could see the benefit of living with his new team and sighed,

“Alright.”

“Great! See you at three then.”

Tony hung up and Steve stared at the phone wondering if that really just happened. He decided not to dwell on it and rolled back over, letting sleep take him again.

He wasn’t actually expecting Tony to show up at his apartment at three thirty the next day. He did pack a few things, but not enough to warrant people to move his stuff.

“Sorry,” he said when he only had two big duffle bags full. Tony looked at him curiously and at the rest of the stuff in Steve’s living room (which was, to use an understatement, a bit archaic),

 "You’re not taking anything else?”

 "I don’t need it,” Steve shrugged, “None of this is mine. Most of my stuff got sold or given to charity when they thought I was dead. And it wasn’t much then, anyway.”

Besides, Steve was ready to get out of his time capsule. He figured he was never going to get better if he didn’t start living in the century he was actually in.

Tony nodded like he understood and said, “Alright,” and nothing else. He was putting on his shades as he walked out of the building, looking at like he didn’t belong in this scruffy part of the city in his designer suit that probably cost more than everything Steve had in his bags, when Steve asked,

“When can I come back and get my bike?”

 And Tony replied, “It’s already been gotten.”

 And Steve wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Tony led him into the Tower more magnanimously than Steve was expecting. Steve didn’t know if they had truly buried the hatchet or not or if Tony was just sweeping it under the rug, brushing it aside like other things, but Steve was at least grateful for the other’s hospitality.

“Call if you need anything,” he said, dropping Steve off at his room. Well, room wasn’t the correct word. It was more like a suite. It was more like an entire floor. It was definitely more than what Steve was expecting, much less what he felt like he deserved. He opened the door to the main living space and a voice saying,

“Good evening, Captain,” made him freeze in his tracks. He looked around because the voice seemed to come from all directions at once. He tried to be rational about this, this was Tony’s place there was no way there’d be an intruder, but it was hard when his heart was hammering in his chest and with his muscles tensing like he was about to battle. His blood pumped too quickly and he could hear it singing in his ears.

“Captain?”

He pressed himself against a wall so he could protect his back and tried to press down his feelings of panic. He groused out,

“Who are you?”

There was a pause before the voice replied slowly, “I am JARVIS the artificial intelligence security system. Are you alright, Captain? I’m sensing your vitals are off.”

Steve didn’t say anything else, his eyes darting back and forth in a manic manner and two floors above, in Tony’s lab, JARVIS announced:

“Sir, I believe Captain Rogers requires assistance.”

Tony turned down his music and frowned, “What kind of assistance?”

 “He seemed startled by my greeting and I fear agitating him more.”

Tony sighed and dropped his tools and went to go check. He wasn’t expecting to see Steve huddled in a corner like a frightened, wild animal. His eyes didn’t seem to be seeing anything and Tony called to get his attention.

“Cap?”

The other didn’t budge. His eyes still had that glossed over look it was starting to worry Tony.

“Steve!”

Steve startled and looked in Tony’s direction, ready to fight. He only lost the tension in his shoulders when he recognized the man and seemed confused and nervous more than anything.

“Tony? What’s that—who’s voice have I been hearing?”

“JARVIS? He’s my AI,” and at Steve’s confused look, Tony elaborated, “Artificial Intelligence. Kind of like my robot butler.”

“But where is he?”

“He’s just a computer, Cap. He doesn’t have a physical body. His voice is just projected through multiple speakers through the tower.”

Steve’s shoulders relaxed a little, although he still had a pinched, confused look, but he seemed more embarrassed than anything.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Tony shrugged, “It’s fine. He does tend to startle most new people, I probably should have warned you,” and Steve got the feeling that Tony was only saying that for his sake. He felt a little grateful and a little annoyed at the same time. But he nodded, hoping to convey that he would like to be alone for a little while. Tony thankfully got the message and left Steve to his own devices.

When he was gone, Steve sat down on an expensive looking leather couch and buried his face into his hands with a sigh. This would take some more getting used to.

\--o0o--

Life in the Tower was different. He wouldn’t exactly say it was better; he still had his nightmares and he still had moments where he spaced out and often never felt like getting out of bed. While he appreciated the companionship of the others, they were somewhat forcing him to embrace technology at a faster pace than he would have liked. At his old apartment, he had a television, a laptop, and his phone, all of which were given to him by SHEILD. He was given a few, basic instructions on how to use them and he had figured out some stuff on his own, but he was far behind and being with the Avengers forced that reality on him.

And it wasn’t even the technology, it was the endless supply of pop culture around him that he didn’t get. Most humor seemed to rely on it, so he was often the only one not laughing at an off-hand comment or the only one not nodding in agreement at an argument about fictional characters. There was so much media to consume it was hard to catch up on. It was like as soon as he finally figured out one thing, the next thing had already become old. It was exhausting, trying to keep up.

It got to the point where he just stopped asking his teammates what certain things meant. It was easier to just look up things on the internet (a thing that still seemed foreign and bizarre to him, but he took to it in his own time). He learned more about world history since he had been asleep and it continuously depressed him. Howard had spoken of peace, but this wasn’t any type of peace that Steve wanted.

It was a bit of a relief when Thor finally returned, solemn over his brother’s punishment. Steve was no longer the only one in the room who didn’t laugh or nod. Thor had even more history to catch up on and understood the medium of movies and television even less than Steve. But Thor could go back home if he wanted; he could return to a place where everything was familiar and Steve didn’t have that. It made Steve feel unreasonably bitter.

In fact, Steve felt unreasonably bitter a lot of the time. He still mostly didn’t want to be here and it was frustrating. He felt angry at Howard for having too much damn hope in him, at the ice not for killing him in the first place.

Still, he tried to go on with his daily routine. He still volunteered. He still worked out (Tony was always excited to try to build a punching bag Steve couldn’t destroy). He still sketched only it was now a mix of his new teammates and his old friends. He made room for movie night on Friday and dinner every Sunday. He still had those odd episodes of spacing out. It didn’t happen around the Avengers, he didn’t think, but then again it didn’t seem to happen as often in the Tower as it did in his apartment.

Sometimes it took him awhile to remember where he was. It got to the point where he’d wake up from a nightmare and stare at the ceiling, afraid, and croak out,

“What year is it?”

“2012, sir,” JARVIS’s smooth voice would reply.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir. I can bring up some news footage if you’d like.”

“No, that isn’t—thank you, JARVIS. I’m fine.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

Steve was glad that computers seemed to have a great deal more patience than humans.

\--o0o--

It was all going decently well until one movie night. Tony had a devious look on his face when he announced, “Buckle up everyone it’s a tearjerker.”

There were some annoyed looks (a dismayed cry of, “Please, not another Nicholas Sparks movie!”) and Steve was confused when Tony looked at him and said, “I want to know your opinion on the accuracy.”

Everyone except Steve and Thor tensed and shot incredulous looks at Tony when the movie began to play. Steve got it a few moments in, what this was supposed to be, and he wanted to be furious but then the machine gun fire started and he was no longer there. His hands shook as he remembered bunkering down from Hydra fire, his adrenaline the only thing keeping him going because he was still terrified of dying. He didn’t participate in the invasion like the movie was portraying, but he knew of men who had. Running towards certain death wasn’t easy.

Steve snapped out the memory long enough to see a man step on a landmine and get twisted apart and suddenly he felt like vomiting. He was too sick and dismayed to possibly continue and he quickly got up to leave. His super hearing picked up angry snippets when he left the room:

(“What the hell are you going to make him watch next?! _Schindler’s List?_ ”)

By the time he got to his floor his vision was already blurry. His heart was a staccato beat in his ears and it felt harder and harder to breathe with each passing second. He locked all doors and collapsed onto his bed as a sob escaped his chest. Memories kept assaulting him and he wanted it to stop. He heard shells whiz past him, bullets land in trees and rock. He felt smoke burning his lungs and his eyes. He smelled the stench of blood and death as men dropped like flies around him. The worst part was that he knew it wasn’t real, but his senses were deceiving him and he wasn’t sure what to trust.

He was sobbing completely by the time he became aware of his surroundings, hands over his ears to try and block out the false sounds as he begged this false reality to not kill him.

He was hiccupping softly by the time there was a knock on his door.

“Go away,” he called hoarsely but the door opened anyway. He quickly wiped the tears off of his face and looked up with red-rimmed eyes and saw Tony who was suddenly sporting a pretty impressive bruise on his jaw.

“What happened?” Steve asked against his better judgment.

“Clint punched me. But I deserved it so,” Tony shrugged and Steve really couldn’t muster up any sympathy. Tony took one look at him and sighed. “I’m…sorry, Steve. I shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have had to see that.”

“Were you making fun of me?” He asked, because it happened a lot.

“No! I just…didn’t think—”

“That I was living that four months ago?”

“I thought it’d help. You know, to see it fictionalized. And I really was curious about your opinion on accuracy.”

Steve didn’t reply (what would he even say to that?) so Tony backed out with another apology, which was much more than Steve was expecting.

Steve didn’t go to the next movie night. Or the next. Or the next.

\--o0o--

Steve wasn’t actively avoiding the rest of the Avengers, he just didn’t go out of his way to find them. That was all. And he still went to dinner on Sunday. He just didn’t like those pitying looks his teammates gave him after the movie fiasco. And whatever, it just solidified the fact that he was an outsider, he would be always be an outsider, and no amount of movie watching would change that.

And really, Steve was angry that his teammates thought they had to be like glass around him.

He—alright, he wasn’t _okay—_ but there wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. Sure, he had a lot of nightmares and maybe his flashbacks, which had increased dramatically since the movie, got so bad he didn’t know where he was anymore. Sometimes, his exchanges with JARVIS had changed to:

“What year is it?”

“2012, sir.”

“Am I really here?”

“I am assuming that you mean physically, then yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Your body is emitting heat radiation and my sensors are detecting a strong pulse. You are indeed alive and here, Captain.”

“Okay,” he’d sigh, because he wasn’t sure how to convey that suspicion he had after a very terrible nightmare or flashback that he had woken up in Hell (or worse, that he hadn’t woken up at all).

And sometimes he knew his mind was there, but it felt like his body wasn’t there at all. It was a weird thing; it didn’t pop up very often because he was mostly used to the body he now owned. But there were times, in those moments of quiet despair, he felt like he was in a cage, a giant meat prison that he couldn’t escape. He wanted to claw off his skin until the old Steve Rogers was there, but the old Steve Rogers was as gone as the rest of the past.

And sure, he still didn’t want to be there, but he was alive and still fighting and that was all that mattered.

It wasn’t even like Steve actively wanted to kill himself or anything (although the thought had crossed his mind enough that he was slightly worried), he just had trouble seeing a point. He didn’t understand why he had survived when his life was so miserable because occasionally he still cried at night because of Bucky and Peggy and _it wasn’t fair._

It was like this awfulness clawed at his chest and throat sometimes, choking him, reminding him that everything was irrevocably _gone_. And those days he really wanted to be gone too.

At times he thought that if he were struck down in an act of divine retribution, he really wouldn’t mind that much.

But he really didn’t expect that to happen, no matter how much he kind of wanted it. He also didn’t think his—his _issues_ would affect his Avenging work.

They were raiding a compound of illegal weapons, some of a chemical and biological nature. Bruce and Thor were holding back, as backup in case it got really bad and everything needed to be destroyed. Steve thought he had everything under control until someone started shooting.

He froze against his will, his memories weeding unhelpfully through his mind, and he was no longer sure where he was or which battle he was fighting. He wasn’t sure _when_ he was.

“Cap, look out!” Someone screamed over the intercom. Steve shook out of it just long enough to turn and feel a bullet tear through his leg.

He had been shot before and didn’t think it would be a problem, but he tried to see his attacker and crumpled to the ground unexpectedly. It had hit his thigh and blood was spurting out of the admittedly huge hole. It was soaking through his uniform, running down his leg and he knew that wasn’t right because it was just a leg wound there shouldn’t have been so much blood.

Suddenly, Steve realized he was getting dizzy. He stopped trying to get up and just lay there, resigned, because it was getting harder and harder to open his eyes and keep everything focused and he was in a lot of pain. It felt like his leg was burning itself from the inside out. There was a brief, hysteric moment where he was happy because he was pretty certain that he was dying and he was actually grateful because he was going out in a flash of heat instead of a cold, icy tomb. He let out a wheezy laugh and before he blacked out he recognized the roar of the Hulk.

\--o0o--

When Steve opened his eyes, he was angry that he had thwarted another near-death experience. Then he wondered if a significant amount of time had passed since he last closed his eyes and looked at all of the very bland, modern medical equipment. Natasha was sitting beside his bed, which was a relief. Something seemed to be bothering her, judging by the mild frown on her face.

“What happened?” He groused out, his throat still dry.

“You were shot. High caliber round. The bullet hit an artery and you might have bled out if it weren’t for the serum.”

“Sorry,” Steve said, not sure if he was apologizing for making them worry, or apologizing for surviving. She stared at him a little while before pursing her lips and saying,

“I think you should take a break for a while.”

Steve sat up, indignant, despite the pain in his leg, “You mean stop fighting? I can’t do that.”

“You blanked out there today. I saw it, Cap, and it almost killed you.”

Steve grit his teeth, angry, “It won’t happen again.”

“You can’t promise that. I’m not going to tell the others, but you should know it isn’t just your life you’re putting in danger,” she said briskly and before he could reply, she stood saying,

“I’ll go tell them you’re awake.”

Steve was fuming as he watched her go. He knew she had a point, but if he couldn’t be Captain America then what did he have left? He would literally be nothing.

When the others came in, he told them reluctantly that he was going to take a break, even after his leg healed. Tony could do the tactics and he would be watching if they absolutely needed his input. They seemed confused, mostly. Thor declared that they would fight valiantly in his honor and Steve forced a smile. If he could do better by sitting out, well, he would just have to.

It would take probably a week or so before his leg healed anyway. The doctors said that a normal person would take over a month, if they were lucky enough to survive, but Steve had a good estimate on his own advanced healing. He had been operated on while he was out, they had to set the shattered bone of his thigh, and Steve ended up with a leg brace and crutches and was told to keep off of his leg until it healed so he might as well get used to being useless.

He wasn’t stupid enough to try and move around on his hurt leg; childhood taught him that agitating injuries only led to more injuries, super serum or not. And it was almost like being a child again when he wasn’t able to help his Ma bring in money because he was too ill to work. He just hoped he could make the best of it.

\--o0o--

Not being able to do anything was something akin to torture, Steve thought. Sure, he hobbled around during the first week whenever he could. He tried watching movies again, but he couldn’t stand to be so physically and mentally inactive. It made that darkness that lurked in his mind more apparent and that just aggravated his nightmares. He felt restless and unsure.

Even after the first week and his leg healed, it was like his issues just became worse. Every shadow out of the corner of his eye was an enemy. The chill of fall was suddenly the ice. He couldn’t leave his back to a door because what if he was ambushed? If he was startled by a loud noise, he didn’t even know how long he would stand there, imagining the war going on around him and panicking silently to himself.

His nightmares sometimes took on macabre themes, in a worsening way. Instead of just him facing death, it was him actually doing the killing. He felt an enemy soldier’s head in his hands on those raids where guards mistakenly showed up and he twisted, fast and swift, to kill the man before he could yell for help. It was impossible to ever forget something like that: the dull crunch of a neck breaking beneath his fingers and sometimes Steve could feel literal blood on his hands.

He wasn’t as clean as everyone seemed to think he was. War was a gritty business and he had done what was necessary to win. Sometimes he thought his nightmares were a terrible price to pay for winning and he spent half the day convinced everyone could see the blood on him that he could so clearly feel.

But other times, he mostly dreamt of ice, the bitter sting of Bucky’s death, the cold resignation of his own. He thought that he might get used to them, but the terror was always there.

Steve had once stupidly thought that he could conquer the recurrent drowning in his nightmares by getting into the pool. His only blessing was that Thor had followed him, curious, when Steve headed down to the area, which he hadn’t done since before the shooting.

Perhaps Steve’s mistake was that he tried to wade through the water first. He thought it would calm his nerves if he went slowly and took deep breaths as he stepped down the steps and the water trickled over his toes.

 _One step at a time_ he thought, even though he was gritting his teeth, forcing his legs to keep working as the water got deeper and deeper. When the water was up to his chest, he was trying to ignore his very real terror.

Then he slipped on the gradual slope that led into the deep end and panicked. Thor cried out his name before he went under, but none of that mattered because Steve knew he was being drowned and frozen again in that stupid plane and stupid ice and he fought the water like it was burning him.

Then suddenly strong arms were around him, which made him struggle more, but he was brought to the surface and pulled out of the water and Thor let him go just in time before he vomited the pool water onto the concrete. Thor thumped his back firmly when he continued coughing and when he settled into quiet hiccups, Thor asked,

“Can you not swim, Captain?”

And Steve looked down at his legs with a sigh. “I thought I could.”

\--o0o--

Steve felt guiltily grateful that he was on his leave of absence during the next mission. There was a snow monster roaming in northern Alaska and Steve would have broken if he felt that chill again. The imaginary chill was bad enough, bad to the point where he couldn’t watch the live feed from Iron Man’s helmet and told Tony that he could handle the rest. He left before Tony could argue.

_Steve was trapped; the body of the plane was warped around him and the freezing water slowly made it past his knees, his chest, and then his neck._

He took a shower, a scalding hot shower that he could barely feel because he felt so bone-chillingly cold. He shivered and sat at the bottom of the tub again, like he had done so much recently, as memories kept haunting him. It was the ice, it was his nightmares, and it was everything that he wanted to be gone and done away with. A large part of him despaired that he had devolved to this level of uselessness that he couldn’t even watch a video of stupid snow. But no matter what he did, the ice remained in his veins.

Steve didn’t know how long he sat there, haunted, but JARVIS eventually announced that the team was back. He pulled himself off of the floor and cut off the water. Only a small part of him was surprised to see that his skin had turned angry red under the heat.

“The Avengers request your presence, Captain,” JARVIS said when he stepped out of the bathroom.

“Tell them that I’m not feeling well,” he sighed. It was only a half-lie. Of course they knew he couldn’t get sick, but they probably wouldn’t press it.

“Very well, Captain,” JARVIS replied with only the barest hint of disapproval.

Steve put on his boxers and a shirt and crawled into the bed. He didn’t want to face his teammates; he didn’t want to face anything. It was irrational, he knew, but it was one of those nights.

He slept for a very long time, slowly fading in and out of consciousness until human needs got the better of him. He still felt the remnants of the cold despite JARVIS assuring him it was a nice 72 degrees in the tower so he put on a large hoodie—a great modern invention for when he felt like hiding in his own clothing—and sweatpants and trudged down to the living area of the tower, but even doing this felt exhausting. It was like he was moving in a thick sludge that weighed down his movements, made it almost impossible to breathe, and begged him to return to bed. But one curse of the serum was that his metabolism didn’t allow him to remain foodless for too long.

His teammates stared at him when he stepped into the kitchen/dining area. He knew he must look awful. He hadn’t shaved in a while, he was dressed for outside, and his eyes were probably a little swollen from sleeping so long.

Steve frowned, wondering why they were eating together and asked cautiously, “What day is it?”

“It’s Sunday,” Bruce answered slowly, looking concerned, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” He shrugged and then looked at them all sheepishly, “Is it okay that I eat with you?”

“Of course,” Natasha frowned, “Are you sure you aren’t sick?”

Steve shook his head saying, “I can’t get sick,” and she seemed to leave it at that so he took his usual place at the foot of the table. They passed him a plate and he ate quickly, barely tasting the food. He was sure it was supposed to be delicious—it was Bruce’s curry, which he normally liked—but it was all flavorless to him.

He could feel his teammates’ glances at him while he ate. He probably looked like he had been starving or something, but he really didn’t care. He ate plateful after plateful until he was finished and mumbled his thanks for the meal before getting up and putting his plate in the sink.

“Friend Steve,” Thor began when he realized Steve was leaving, “Will you not stay awhile? We are commencing in the videogames hereafter.”

“No, I don’t—” _I don’t feel well. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to force you all to be around me when I know I’m completely worthless._

“I have things to do.”

Nobody looked convinced but he didn’t really care and exited from the area. He dove back underneath his covers and slept and slept and slept.

\--o0o--

It took a week for him to leave his room for an extended period of time. He only got out of bed to get food (takeout that was delivered), to use the bathroom, and to take those scalding hot showers if his nightmares plagued them. In those showers, he scrubbed hard enough that his skin wore raw and bled (albeit briefly) three times before JARVIS made a comment about it. He had felt oddly pleased by the healing red welts that had formed on his skin, and he felt like it was absolute proof that he wasn’t encased in ice, but he conceded and settled for the bright red of his agitated skin his normally hot showers provoked.

It took a while for him to think about interacting with the others without falling to pieces. When he finally emerged, clean-shaven and doubtful, everyone seemed surprisingly happy to see him.

Tony lifted his drink towards him saying, “Hey Cap!”

Clint gave him a half-smile. “Good to have you back.”

Steve nodded and sat down at the corner of one couch and allowed Thor to explain what they were doing. Apparently they were continuing Thor’s video game education. They were on Mario Kart and allowed Steve to join in, which he had to admit was a little fun. About halfway through, he decided to get himself some food only when he came back they had started a new game. He stood behind the couch curiously to watch.

It was fine, although Steve did scrunch up his nose when he was told that the purpose of the game was to steal and murder, until something happened onscreen and Steve heard shots being fired. He recognized the tensing of his muscles for what it was, how everything became indistinct and cold and he was gone before he could finish that thought.

_Everything happened in slow motion. Steve had just stepped out of the chamber, pumped full of serum, and had just put his shirt on when the bridge exploded. He was confused, shaken for a moment but then he looked up and saw Erskine take two bullets to the chest. Steve was over to him in seconds, fearful because this man had just given him everything and he couldn’t lose his life for Steve._

_Erskine lifted a finger and pointed it at Steve’s chest, wordlessly echoing the sentiments from the night before. And then, he was gone._  

“Steve?”

_Steve looked around wildly, wondering who could possibly be calling his name. A sudden, pained whimper caught him by surprise._

_“_ Steve, _stop_.”

He shook his head as the lab began to dissolve around him and all that was left was Stark Tower and the Avengers who were staring at him. He looked down and saw he had a nasty grip on Natasha’s wrist and let go of her like he had been burned.

“What—”

He backed away from them all, reeling in horror. He knew vaguely that he had had another flashback, but Natasha was holding her bruised wrist to her chest, clearly still in a lot of pain, and he was in disbelief.

“I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

He nearly tripped over the plate of food he had dropped and Thor asked calmly,

“Captain, might I have a word?”

Steve wasn’t sure what to expect from that, but anything was better than everyone looking at him, knowing how broken he really was, so he followed Thor into the kitchen and sat down at the table when the other did.

Thor looked grave when he said, “Do not blame yourself for what happened.”

“How? It was my fault. I hurt her and I could have done much more if I hadn’t woken—”

“No one blames you for what transpired,” Thor cut in smoothly, “I myself am not unused to warriors losing their way in fits of memory and I doubt the others are as well. Indeed, it would be ignoble for us to blame you in light of the pain you clearly face.  We should’ve realized that game was not suitable to play.”

“It wasn’t the game itself,” Steve tried to shrug, “I think it was probably the gunfire and…you shouldn’t have to do that.”

Thor was silent for a moment, as though he were recalling something, and nodded, “Aye, that makes sense. And it is no hardship, shield brother! We want you well.”

Steve wasn’t sure how to take that. His mind was telling him that that wasn’t true; that he was useless now, dangerous even, and the team couldn’t possibly care. When he continued to stare at the table, Thor asked,

“Friend Steve, how often do these fits occur?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged again, deflecting. A lot, he could have said. More than what he needed to face.

Thor frowned, “I cannot say this will bring immediate relief, but I have found that talking about matters helps soothe them. You will find no shortage of willing ears here, and I am told that there is a form of Midgardian healing exclusively for the mind. It is a good place to start.”

Steve couldn’t believe that Thor of all people was suggesting that he go seek help. This was really his life now, but Thor misunderstood. Steve didn’t need to “get well” he needed to be gone. That was the only possible way any of this could get better. But Steve nodded and sighed,

“Alright.”

“We only want you well,” Thor repeated and Steve nodded again absently before excusing himself. It didn’t matter what the team thought they wanted because Steve still was still reeling from hurting Natasha and felt so tired and afraid of hurting anyone else. He was worse than useless now, what was the point?

He escaped back into his room and crawled into his cocoon of covers just wishing he didn’t have to be alive anymore.

\--o0o--

It was four days before Natasha and Clint came to his room. They picked the lock and entered against his wishes (he suspected that JARVIS helped them) and he winced when he saw the splint on Natasha’s wrist.

“Go away,” he murmured, muffled by his covers, before rolling over so his back faced them. He didn’t want to deal with anyone, couldn’t deal with anyone right now, especially not these two people who were so capable of seeing how broken and useless he was.

“You don’t think we’re angry at you about what happened do you?” Natasha asked and he could feel her weight on the bed beside him.

“We’ve been around enough military to see guys flashback like that; it wasn’t your fault, Cap,” Clint asserted from somewhere around Steve’s feet.

Steve knew what they were talking about because he had seen it too: men cracking under the pressure of battle, but they weren’t Steve. Those men had been driven insane, but Steve was just numb and tired and a little haunted by the past. That was all.

“Not crazy,” he muttered, although he couldn’t help but feel he was asserting it to himself as much as he was to them.

“No one said you were,” Natasha said softly as she stroked through his—admittedly greasy—hair,

“But you need to get out of bed.”

“No.” And he knew he sounded childish, but he couldn’t face the outside world. He just wanted rest that was all.

“Come on, Steve,” Clint said, “You won’t start to feel better until you get out of this room.”

“I can’t.” And they just didn’t understand it, how numb and broken and useless he was and how he didn’t want the rest of the world to see it. He couldn’t even be Captain America now because Captain America wasn’t broken, but Steve was. All he was now was poor, pathetic Steve Rogers.

“You—” Clint stopped himself and after a pause got off the bed. “When you feel like it, we’ll be here. Okay?”

Steve didn’t allow himself to nod and after the pair left he heard bits and pieces of their conversation from outside of his door.

“…pretty bad…”

“….don’t think that…”

“…tell Fury…”

And then their voices went too far for him to hear and he despaired more at the thought of even more people seeing him like this, so worthless. He dove into the covers more and tried to ignore the world around him.

\--o0o--

After a week staying in bed, wishing he wasn’t there, he realized something very crucial. He couldn’t believe he didn’t figure out the solution to his problem sooner. Steve didn’t need to get well; he needed to be gone. Well, why couldn’t he do that? It was clear that he was useless, worthless, and was absolutely a hindrance to the people around him. He couldn’t stand feeling so numb and trapped and haunted anymore. So the simplest solution was to just be gone, to fade away with the rest of the past. He was a relic anyway. No one missed relics anymore.

At first Steve had a difficult time thinking of a way to do this. He knew the easiest way by far would be to jump off the Tower, but something like that would cause an awful mess and ruckus and he didn’t want to do that to his teammates. He didn’t want to become a nuisance in life and in death, but after a few days he realized the only way he could do this and actually die (at this point the serum was more of a curse than a blessing) and he berated himself for not thinking of it sooner.

He enacted his plan the day there was a disaster in Queens and all of his teammates were away. As though on autopilot, he went down to the team armory and typed in the passcode that no one had thought to revoke from him. He selected a low caliber handgun (no need to make a bigger mess than he was going to, right?) and went back up to his room. He got in his bathtub and stared down the barrel, not quite sure why he was hesitating. He wasn’t afraid; if anything he still felt numb and detached. He wanted this, he was sure. There was no other solution to his problems, no other way to end his suffering. Well, he thought bitterly, no one had said that this would be easy…

Across the city, JARVIS announced on Iron Man’s HUD, “Sir, I believe Captain Rogers may be a danger to his life.”

Tony stopped what he was doing and told the others on the comm, “You guys finish up here, Steve might be in trouble,” before turning around and flying at full speed in the other direction.

“Status update JARVIS.”

“He is on the 61th floor, in his bathroom, with one of the pistols from the armory.”

“Shit!” Tony cursed, willing his thrusters to go faster. He couldn’t even focus on the horror of what Steve was trying to do; all he could think about was stopping him. When the building came into view, Tony planned to smash through the window on Steve’s level, but JARVIS chimed in,

“Sir, it may be unwise to startle Captain Rogers as he has a gun in his hand.”

Tony had to concede to that point and altered directions to land on his landing strip. The mechanism to take off his suit was going entirely too slow as was the elevator when he got to it. All he could do was hope that he wasn’t too late. But all of that changed when he reached Steve’s suite and he heard a gunshot ringing out from deeper in the apartment and Tony felt his blood run cold.

“Steve!?” He called, running as fast as he could towards the sound’s source with his heart beating in his throat. When he got to the bathroom, the door was unlocked and he nearly fell to his knees in dismay at the sight. Steve’s blood was splattered all over the tiling behind the tub; his body was askew and limp. Tony couldn’t see the gun from where he was standing, but he was sure if he got closer he would be able to.

“Sir, my sensors are detecting that he still has a pulse.”

That startled Tony and he suddenly realized that he was going to have to take some sort of life-saving action.

“What do I do, J?” He didn’t panic, but it was close.

“Covering his wounds should be first priority. There are gauze wraps and bandages in the cabinet beneath—”

JARVIS didn’t get to finish before Tony was in the cabinet and pulling out supplies. Tony had some experience bandaging up himself, but he had never encountered anything so severe. With JARVIS’s instruction, he managed to completely wrap Steve’s head, padding the wound areas. When he was done, JARVIS told him,

“Some research on the serum and resuscitation suggests that putting his body on ice may slow or inhibit brain cell death.”

And Tony really didn’t want to do that to Steve, but he knew he had no choice and enlisted the help of every worker who was still in the Tower to help him get ice. The tub was mostly full by the time SHIELD medics came in and took Steve’s unconscious body away on a gurney. Tony wasn’t quite sure how long he sat on the bathroom floor, mentally going over how many different ways he could have saved Steve, but it must have been awhile because Bruce came in, in fresh clothes, and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey. You okay?”

Tony didn’t answer. The obvious answer was no, he was not okay, but he didn’t really want to admit that.

“Why don’t you go get cleaned up? Fury will be here soon.”

Tony wanted to say ‘fuck Fury’ but he looked down and realized he was still covered in some of Steve’s blood. He hung his head and laughed.

“Shit, I guess someone is going to have to clean this up now.”

“Tony…” Bruce sighed and decided to just say it, “It wasn’t your fault, okay? Steve probably would have done this regardless—”

“You don’t know that! If I had been faster or—or quieter I don’t know…”

“No,” Bruce rounded on Tony and looked him in his grief-stricken eyes, “You are not responsible for this. No one was. Steve was unwell and we just didn’t know how bad it was, okay?”

Tony didn’t assent, but allowed Bruce to get him away from the bathroom and they parted so Tony could take a shower. The shower didn’t really help, but he felt something close to human when Fury gathered them around their dining table.

“Now before you ask, Rogers is alive but fighting for his life in the capable hands at SHIELD. Anyone going to tell me why he’s in my ICU with a bullet wound in his head?”

“It was self-inflicted, sir,” Natasha answered, not elaborating.

“Didn’t you two tell me that his depression was getting worse?” Fury asked, looking at Natasha and Clint, “And no one thought to revoke his access to firearms?”

“I apologize,” JARVIS said, “There was only a 31% chance that he would cause himself harm.”

Fury sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “What’s done is done. What we need to focus on now is what we’re going to do with him if he gets better.”

Nobody missed that he said “if” and not “when.”

“Our best option is to put him in psyche—”

“No!”

Everyone looked at Clint who shrank a little under the scrutiny. Tony vaguely recalled that Clint was in psyche for a week after the invasion.

“I mean, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Unfamiliar places are kind of what got Cap this way.”

“Any better ideas?”

“Well, he could stay here,” answered Bruce while fiddling with his glasses, “provided that he still receives therapy. I can look after any further medical needs and I’m sure that JARVIS could function to prevent Steve from hurting himself if given the right protocols.”

“He could,” Tony agreed.

Fury leveled them both with a stern look. “If he does hurt himself under your AI’s care, then it’s on all of you and he comes back to SHIELD, got that? Assuming that he’ll agree to being here, of course.”

Everyone murmured their agreement and Fury left, evidently satisfied. Even though Steve hadn’t been the most sociable in the upcoming weeks before the incident, everyone could feel his absence in the Tower. This was made worse by the fact that they couldn’t even visit him because his condition was too unstable. The SHIELD medics were doing as much as they could to decrease his brain’s swelling and to remove skull and bullet fragments.

Nobody got much sleep that night.

\--o0o--

The second day, Steve was doing slightly better. He was on oxygen and various anti-inflammatory and anti-seizure drugs. They had to put a special intravenous patch on him so the medicines could have a chance to work in the first place (they were already at triple the normal dosage and there wasn’t much more they could do but hope it worked). They had removed as much of the fragments as they could without risking further injury, but they still had cold compresses all over his body to keep his internal temperature down. The team visited and they were all perturbed to see their leader so still and lifeless. Bruce eventually took it upon himself to oversee some of Steve’s medical care (which wasn’t to say that he _entirely_ distrusted SHIELD’s medical staff, but some things he’d rather see to firsthand).

Five days later the swelling was gone entirely and, god bless the serum, his brain was starting to heal. They still had him on oxygen and the anti-seizure medicine, but he was recovering better than anyone had hoped. His skull was beginning to regrow to the astonishment of his doctors, but he still remained entirely unresponsive.

Two weeks later and his fingers occasionally twitched by his side and his eyes moved behind their lids. He looked tired, restless even, despite being so still. There were bruises developing beneath his eyes. Bruce thought that if he was sleeping, his dreams certainly weren’t pleasant. The team all visited him in shifts, including Coulson, who hobbled in on crutches from physical therapy and stayed the longest.

Three weeks since the injury and Steve opened his eyes. He wasn’t cognizant or responsive (“partially vegetative” one of the doctors had called it), but he could swallow if fed and occasionally his eyes might trace a person’s movements across the hospital room. His skull had completely healed leaving only his short hair, which had to be shaved prior to his surgery, as a visible reminder of what had happened. It was around this time the team discussed moving him to the Tower. There was the possibility that he could wake up soon and nobody wanted a repeat of what had happened when he was thawed out of the ice.

After some wrangling and yelling at Steve’s official doctors, they got him moved.

\--o0o--

Four weeks since the incident, Steve opened his eyes for real. Bruce was asleep in a chair across from him and he got the foreboding sense that something was deeply wrong.

“JARVIS?” He whispered.

“Yes, captain?”

“What year is it?”

“2012, sir.”

“Why is Bruce here? Did something happen?”

“That is probably best to be explained by one of your teammates,” JARVIS answered smoothly and Steve blinked because he had never been denied information directly from JARVIS like that. But Bruce shifted and opened his eyes, probably awoken from their conversation.

“Good morning, Steve,” He yawned. “How are you feeling?”

“Confused,” Steve answered plainly.

“Well, yeah, that’s to be expected. Do you know who I am?”

Now Steve was even more confused. “Yeah.”

“Do you know what year it is?”

 "2012?”

 “You don’t sound too sure about that.”

 Steve shrugged lightly, “I’m never sure.”

 By this point Bruce had gotten up and pulled out a tiny flashlight. “I’m going to use this to check your pupils, alright?”

“Okay.”

Bruce shined the light in both of Steve’s eyes and evidently satisfied with whatever he saw, he asked,

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Uh…I remember feeling pretty awful and going to the armory. Has something happened?”

Bruce paused, clearly hesitating, and said, “I really don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but you hurt yourself Steve. You uh…you took one of the pistols from the armory and you shot yourself in the head. You’ve been in a coma for over a month.”

Steve swallowed, the knot of worry and apprehension he had felt since he woke up tightening further. He knew that’s what he had been intending when he went to the armory, but he didn’t think…he wasn’t sure if he felt relieved for his teammates’ sake or upset because he wasn’t dead. His stomach felt sour and he laid his head back against his pillow, defeated.

"Who found me?”

“Tony.”

After a brief silence where Steve wasn’t sure how to deal with that information Bruce said softly,

“Fury is giving you the option of living in SHIELD’s psyche ward or staying here and going to thrice weekly therapy sessions.”

Steve’s brow furrowed. “Oh. Okay, just…let me think about?”

“Of course. Medical is probably going to want to run a few scans to see that everything is okay now that you’ve woken up.”

“Alright. Can you give me a moment? I’m really out of it.”

Bruce gave him a tired smile, “Sure. I’ll be down in the commons if you need me.”

Once he was gone, Steve let out a heavy sigh, wondering what he was going to do. If he had his way, he would want none of this. He didn’t want help and he was especially not looking forward to seeing the rest of his teammates. At least it would probably be better than being at SHIELD, with everyone undoubtedly treating him like a science experiment. Steve sighed again, scrubbing his stubbly face and decided to take a shower before facing the others. He realistically hadn’t taken a shower in a month and he wondered briefly who took care of bathing him while he was unconscious before shoving the thought out of his mind.

The shower picked up his spirits a little—he felt less confused and groggy—but he faltered at the sight of the rest of his teammates. Thankfully, Thor’s bellow of “Steve!” prevented him from immediately saying anything, especially Thor’s bone crushing hug afterwards. When Thor let go he exclaimed,

“It is great to have you back shield brother!” and Steve felt marginally worse.

“Thanks. I’m…sorry to have made you all worry.”

“Just don’t ever do that again,” Tony said with a tight smile, “Or I might have to kill you myself.”

“Have you decided on anything?” Bruce cut in, before Steve could respond to that.

“Uh yeah, I think I’ll just stay here? If that’s alright?”

“Of course.”

Steve smiled slightly, unsure, and Tony winced, “Yeah…about that. We’re basically going to uh, Cap-proof the Tower. You won’t be allowed to operate anything resembling a weapon, like even a pair of scissors, without one of us supervising. JARVIS will tell us the moment you try. No offense and all, but them’s the rules.”

Steve couldn’t stop himself from thinking that this was starting to sound like a punishment and this must have registered on his face because everyone was staring at him with a sort of anticipation.

“Um, that’s fine,” He said quickly to appease, “That makes sense, I guess,” even if it wasn’t exactly fair.

“Think of it this way, Cap,” Clint said from where he was—upside down—on the couch, “At least here you get to keep your shoelaces.”

It was a small condolence.

\--o0o--

Steve met with his psychiatrist for the first time that week. After a horrendous experience that involved him nearly destroying an MRI machine in a panic attack, it was determined that his brain was working back at full capacity (and truly, he had never hated the serum so much in his life). The psychiatrist was recommended to him by Clint and he was taken aback for a moment by her large sweater and jeans. She certainly didn’t look like any kind of doctor, more like somebody’s grandmother. She had greying black hair pulled into a loose ponytail and wrinkles around her eyes.

“You must be Captain Rogers,” She said with a slight accent and held out a bony hand that Steve shook gingerly, “I’m Dr. Wei. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too, ma’am. You can, uh, just call me Steve if you’d like.”

She smiled brightly, “Steve, then. Before we start I just want you to know that anything you say is completely confidential. No one will know what we talk about here, not even SHIELD, unless you tell them.”

“Okay.”

“As I understand, you made an attempt on your life recently? Can you describe the events that lead to that?”

Steve shrugged, “I don’t know. It’s not like it’s a singular thing. A lot of stuff has happened in the past year.”

She nodded, “That’s understandable. You’ve been introduced to a lot of changes recently. How are you acclimating to the 21st century?”

“Alright, I guess? Given the circumstances and all…”

“What about your life before you woke up?”

“What about it?”

“What was it like?”

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I really don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Well, it’s your life and I’d like to know how it affects you,” Dr. Wei said not unkindly. “In the report Agent Romanoff sent, it says that you’ve had flashbacks. Have they been about the war?”

Steve tensed but nodded, “Sometimes.”

“What else?”

_Steve was trapped; the body of the plane was warped around him and the freezing water slowly made it past his knees, his chest, and then his neck._

“Um—I really don’t—”

“That’s alright we don’t have to talk about that right now. What would you like to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Can we do that?”

“We’ve got an hour,” she said easily.

In the end, Steve mostly talked about his mother. It was a safe topic though one he never brought up often. There was grief of course, but it was distant. He felt at peace with her loss and it was comforting to remember her. He was sure that the next time he wouldn’t get off so easily. For the rest of the session, Dr. Wei only asked a few things like if he still felt like hurting or killing himself (he lied and said he didn’t) and she told him that he had severe depression and something called PTSD.

When Steve looked it up when he got home he felt…relieved. It was nice to put a name and face on what he felt, like he couldn’t be that crazy if so many people felt like he felt too.

It was all going decently well that day until Steve realized he was hungry and went down to the kitchen to cook a steak (or three) and some fries. When he tried to open a utensil drawer, it wouldn’t budge and JARVIS said,

“I’m sorry, Captain, but that is against my allowed protocols.”

Steve frowned, feeling all kinds of irritated, and chewed the inside of his mouth. He couldn’t have access to knives, right. “Who’s in the tower at the moment?”

“Dr. Banner is in his lab presently. Would you like me to contact him?”

And let Steve die of shame? “No thank you, that won’t be necessary.”

Steve stared at his frozen steaks and wondered if he should just order takeout again (for the third time that week). It hadn’t become much of a problem yet because most of the team was already eating when he was around, but now that no one else was there…It was frustrating to say the least.

“JARVIS said you needed my help?”  

Steve jumped and cursed the AI for going behind his back.

“No, I was just thinking about cooking something, but you don’t have to…”

“It’s no problem,” Bruce shrugged, “I was getting kind of hungry myself anyway. Mind sharing?”

Steve shoved away his bitterness and forced a smile, “As long as you don’t mind peeling potatoes.”

Cooking with Bruce was surprisingly comforting. The other made light conversation and didn’t even mention all of the things that he could have said about Steve’s issues. Instead he just watched Steve occasionally while they ate silently together. It was alright at first, he was used to it at team meals these days, but then a paranoid part of him thought Bruce was only staring because he had a knife in his hand. Steve tried to ignore that part, but he got more and more annoyed every time he felt Bruce’s eyes shift to him.

Finally enough was enough and Steve slammed his eating utensils on the table, frustrated.

“This is completely unnecessary! It’s not like I’m going to stab myself in the throat while no one’s looking.” It wasn’t like that would work anyway, he thought darkly.

Bruce didn’t seem surprised or upset, he just asked quietly, “But you think about it, don’t you?”

Steve stared at his plate, guilty at both his outburst and Bruce’s comment.

“I may not be able to empathize with everything you’ve been through, but I’ve been where you’re at. Only the other guy saved me, remember?”

Steve bent his head down, ashamed that he had forgotten about that. He had been horrified upon hearing that revelation on the helicarrier so many months ago and now it seemed so distant. Bruce gave him a weak smile and put a hand on top of his.

“We both survived it, Steve. For some reason, both of our bodies are trying to keep us alive. Maybe the reason is a good one.”

Steve hadn’t thought about it like that. If anything, it made eating the rest of his food a little more bearable.

\--o0o--

The first week Steve learned the reality of his newfound restrictions and what they would mean in practical situations. They even ended up making him wear a tracker when he left the tower to monitor his vitals and Steve was at least grateful that it looked like a watch. It certainly made him interact with the team more so if that was their intended purpose, it was working. Steve had been unreasonably embarrassed when he had to ask Natasha to watch him shave the first time because she happened to be the only one around.

He was even more embarrassed when she took the razor from him with a scowl and asked,

“Who taught you how to shave?”

Steve had been completely bewildered (and offended because what was wrong with his shaving?).

“No one—really, I just—”

“Well that’s obvious; you’re going against the grain.” And then in a truly bizarre moment she held his chin and began to shave him with determination screwed on her lovely face. Steve stood still, shocked mostly, but also not wanting her to slash his face on accident. He wasn’t fond of those cheap razors with the plastic handles that seemed so common nowadays so she could cut him for real.

He tried his best not to breathe too much in her face, but it felt nice to be cared for in such a way. She was smiling slightly when she finally backed away and his face was red when she handed him a towel.

“Better?”

He felt his skin and was embarrassed even more to realize it was much smoother than normal. His blush deepened and he nodded,

“Yeah.”

\--o0o--

It became a weird routine. He was forced to spend more time around the Avengers and he went to therapy. He didn’t think the therapy was really working and he still lied every time Dr. Wei asked if he felt like hurting himself or anyone else. The feeling was a numb persistence at the back of his head, but he was afraid of what would happen if he said yes.

One day, the feeling was so unbearable he thought he should try to spar it out with one of his teammates (Dr. Wei said that solitude and dwelling on negative thoughts would only make them worse so he figured he could at least be proactive). His first thought was to go to Thor, but Thor was in Asgard so he went up to the penthouse suite to wait for Tony.

“Sir will be here shortly,” JARVIS said when he entered the area. Steve nodded and hefted his shield onto his shoulder. Honestly, he was just glad they hadn’t taken that away from him yet. He found himself gravitating to the door where the catwalk that took off Tony’s suit was outside. It was a pane of glass that slid open but it didn’t budge when Steve walked up to it.

“JARVIS?”

“I’m sorry Captain you do not have access to that area.”

Steve frowned. Right, it was seventy stories up, he supposed they thought it was “too tempting” for him. He put his hand on the glass and became suddenly angry at all of the barriers that were put in place for him. He wasn’t a child. He could handle being faced with sharp instruments and tall buildings. Without even thinking about it, he shoved his fist through the glass and seeing the blood on his hand only seemed to fuel a righteous indignation within. He picked up his shield and knocked away the rest of the glass until a reasonably sized hole was present. He ignored all of the alarms that JARVIS blared in the background and he climbed through the hole out of spite.

A gust of frigid wind knocked into him as soon as he was standing and the rage that had just filled him previously calmed to cinders. Then it suddenly occurred to him that he really could just _jump_. It was that easy. All of his problems would be done with. No more pitying looks, no more childish restrictions, no more sadness. That dark, terrible part of his mind told him he could do it, just take a few steps, and that’s all it would take. But Steve stepped close to the edge, looked down and—

_He felt the icy chill of the Alps air rushing past him and it mingled with the heat of his terror as Bucky fell, and fell, and fell._

He reeled back in horror, scrambling away. His heart was hammering in his chest and his throat was tightening to a chokehold and when he clambered around to go back into the suite, (JARVIS opened the door for him and the alarms stopped) a sob broke loose. He didn’t know why, it was stupid, he must have relived that moment countlessly, but he couldn’t stop shaking and sat down on Tony’s couch, pulling his knees up to his chin because it was like ice water had been poured down his spine, freezing him and his thoughts. He stayed that way for a while, trying to remember what Dr. Wei said about breathing, because it felt like he was choking on air and he couldn’t stop shaking.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped, surprised to see Tony Stark suddenly in his face. How long had he been sitting there?

“Relax, relax, just wanted to see if you were still with me,” Tony said this as he got up and made his way over to the wet bar. Steve suddenly realized that he had been crying and wiped his face furiously, trying to get his bearings straight.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean to…I mean I broke your door and—sorry.”

Tony looked at him strangely. “I promise you I can pay for it to be fixed, old man, and where do you think you’re going?”

Steve looked down at himself, standing. “I don’t—”

“Sit back down. JARVIS nearly shit himself in the past ten minutes worrying about you. Right, J?”

“I lack the ability to defecate myself sir, but Captain Rogers’s wellbeing and safety is one of my priorities.”

"See? He’s saying he cares.”

Steve was confused and found himself sitting down anyway and saying automatically, “Sorry if I made you upset.”

Tony waved his hand, “He forgives you. But you came all this way for me presumably so what did you want?” 

“Uh, I wanted to spar, but…” Well, he felt exhausted now, mentally and physically. Tony nodded and came out from the bar with a bottle and two tumblers.

“You don’t need to tell me how you feel,” he said as he sat down and he wrinkled his nose. “No really; don’t tell me.”

When Steve saw that Tony was pouring the alcohol into both glasses he muttered, “I can’t get drunk.”

Tony handed him a glass anyway. “Doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the burn.”

He did what Tony said and knocked back the glass. He focused on the burn as it slid down his throat and he couldn’t help but think that this was ironic, remembering when Bucky fell the first time.  

“Thanks,” he muttered when he noticed Tony looking at him expectantly. Steve was content to let Tony refill his tumbler while they drank in comfortable silence until Tony asked JARVIS to pull up a movie and Steve balked.

“Relax, oh my god, I swear it will be nothing to offend your delicate senses.”

Steve frowned, but didn’t move.

“How about something seasonal? And Disney.”

“The Nightmare Before Christmas, sir?” JARVIS asked.

Tony snapped his fingers, “Put it on.”

Steve liked the movie a lot more than he thought he would (especially the stop motion—boy that was something new). He mostly liked that it gave him something to concentrate on other than his tumultuous feelings. Although, he wasn’t quite sure if it was supposed to be a Halloween or Christmas movie and when he asked, Tony just shrugged and said that’s why they were watching it in November. About halfway through, he had relaxed enough from his previous freak out that it seemed like a distance occurrence. He was curled up on his side of the couch, a little warm, and he felt okay enough to murmur,

“He was my friend. He fell—he fell down a ravine and when I was out there I just…”

Tony nodded like he understood, raising his glass somberly, and Steve raised his bottle too and they drank a bitter toast.

\--o0o--

Steve mentioned the incident to Dr. Wei the next day because he was more afraid of what would happen if he kept ignoring and lying about his suicidal urges than he was afraid that she would make him stay somewhere that wasn’t the tower. If he hadn’t had that flashback about Bucky, he most certainly would have jumped and he was of right enough mind now to see how problematic that was.

Dr. Wei had her lips pursed the entire time and when he finished she said, “I’m glad you told me this, Steve. I want you to do a few things the next time you start feeling suicidal. First, I want you to promise yourself that whatever suicidal thoughts you’re having, you won’t act on them. Make a concrete promise; write it down if you have to. It can be for a day or it can be for a week, just give yourself enough time to distance yourself from your suicidal thoughts.

Next, I want you to get away from anything that might tempt you. This includes following the tower’s rules about restricted areas.”

At this, Steve slumped in his chair because he knew that the last time was entirely his fault being too caught up in what was supposed to keep him safe. He didn’t listen and look what happened. Dr. Wei saw this and gave him a soft smile.

“And lastly I want you to not be alone. I’m glad that you sought out Mr. Stark yesterday. If none of your teammates are around you know my phone is always on and I could give you the number of a suicide hotline if you’d like.”

Steve sighed, “No, I think I’ll be alright.”

She looked like she wanted to say something but decided to change the subject.

“Is height normally a trigger for you?”

“Not really. I mean I live in a tower, sixty-something floors up. I guess I was just having a really bad day.”

“Would you like to work on your other triggers?”

“I can do that?”

She smiled, “Of course. We’ve been working on them a little already; I’ve been teaching you how to control your breathing and what causes such a strong reaction to being reminded of trauma.”

“I don’t think it’s working. No offence.”

“It takes time, is all. What I’d like to do with you, part of what we’re already doing, is called prolonged exposure therapy and it’s been shown to reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. There’s a part of dealing with triggers that involves talking about the trauma and it will help with time, but it won’t be easy.”

Steve’s gaze flickered towards her, “I can do it.”

“That isn’t a challenge, Steve. What we’re going to be doing will be really stressful and I want you to be prepared.”

“Alright.”

“We don’t have to start today if you don’t like.”

“No,” Steve put on a resolute face, “I want to.”

“Okay. The next step involves simulated practice, but first I want you to describe your least traumatic experience.”

Steve decided to talk about Erskine and watching him die, since that was what he saw when he hurt Natasha. He admitted that sometimes he wished the hydra agent had shot him instead so Erskine could have done more great things with the world, could have had his army of super soldiers. To this day he didn’t really understand the faith that the other entrusted in him. Sure he saved the world but he still let down a lot of people.

Dr. Wei told him that Erskine clearly felt like he was worth it then maybe Steve should try to think of it that way too.

“Alright,” Steve said, not really agreeing. Dr. Wei frowned but didn’t push it.

Over the next few sessions they went over breathing exercises, talked about Steve’s reactions to hearing gunfire and eventually she deemed it suitable enough that he watch a video with shots being fired. It was fictional, and that helped, but even after all of his progress, he still tensed and saw Erskine being shot in front of him.

“You should choose something to focus on to not lose your way in the memory,” She said after she eased him out of it and calmed him down,

“Something that will ground you in the present.”

After thinking a bit, he decided to choose Iron Man because, well, the suit was as modern as he could think of. He nodded and she played another video, a different one so he couldn’t anticipate where the gunfire would be, and when he felt that pull in his mind he took deep breaths and concentrated on sleek metal and repulsors and the arc reactor. It helped a lot. After the seventh video he didn’t even panic anymore and Dr. Wei handed him a box of ginger snaps that she pulled from seemingly nowhere.

“Is this reward for good behavior?”

She smiled slyly and said, “Just a mini celebration for a milestone.”

He smiled back and enjoyed the treat.

\--o0o--

After a few more sessions he decided to take his desensitization in his own hands. It was probably a bad idea, but he needed to know if he heard a gun firing during a mission he wouldn’t become compromised again. And the fact that he was thinking that positively about his future was a good thing, right?

He approached Clint while the other was eating breakfast—something with marshmallows in it—and he tried to say casually,

“Hey Clint.”

Clint didn’t look up from his tablet (although Steve was sure that Clint could see him) and said,

“Mornin’ Cap.”

Steve fidgeted a little before saying, “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

Clint looked up, “Yeah?”

“I was hoping you could take me to the range and fire a few shots for me?”

Clint actually put down the tablet and leveled him with a stare. “Does your shrink know about this?”

Steve thought about lying but figured the other would probably be able to tell. “No.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I need to face this sooner or later. And compared to when I’m out in the field, I’d rather it be sooner.”

Clint paused for an excruciating amount of time before sighing, “Alright. Just let me finish my cereal.”

When he was done, they went down to the shooting range after Clint selected a handgun from the armory. Steve was drumming with excitement and fear. He wanted to do this, he was sure. He had to. He just hoped that they could make it through this with minimal casualties.

Clint handed him a pair of earmuffs with a look that dared Steve to disagree with the decision. He took them without fuss and stood behind Clint as the other got in his stance. It felt like ages between that time and the time he pulled the trigger and Steve was tense and internally agonizing. And when the shot fired—

Steve’s ears were ringing from the explosion and Erskine was being gunned down in front of him—

Clint was in his face watching his reaction.

“Sorry,” Steve panted when it felt like he could breathe again. Clint gave him an odd look.

“’s alright. What’s progress without a few setbacks?”

“I can do it,” Steve promised, “We can try again.”

Clint shrugged and got back into his stance and Steve reminded himself to breathe and think about Iron Man. Clint fired again and Steve panicked and tensed but he didn’t see blood again so that had to be some sort of improvement.

Five more shots and Steve could convince himself that his heart rate barely rose at all, but this was still only with forewarning and concentration, something he wouldn’t get out in the field.

When they headed out of the armory, Steve wasn’t completely satisfied with the rate of his recovery and Clint put an arm around his shoulder.

“I figure it’s about time for me to impart some of my wisdom.”

To his credit, Steve kept a straight face. “Oh?”

“Don’t give me that, Cap, I’m trying to be serious,” Clint rolled his eyes, “Right, so back when I was a baby marksman at SHIELD, a mission went horribly, horribly wrong. Like, worst case scenario wrong. I was captured from my nest and the fuckers decided to play tic-tac-toe on my arms.”

Steve winced. “What happened?”

“My team had my back. They found me, but I couldn’t look at a knife for like five months after.”

“How did you get better?”

“I don’t think I ever did. I just found a new status quo. And, well, one day I found out that I could cut a steak without barfing,” He paused and bit the inside of his mouth, “What I’m trying to say is, is that it won’t happen all at once. You start little by little adjusting to your new status quo until things begin to work out alright. You feel me?”

Steve nodded, mostly understanding, “Yeah.”

Clint punched him lightly on the shoulder, “Just keep at it. You’re already way ahead of where I was.”

“Thanks,” Steve said. And he meant it.

\--o0o--

It was all going decently well until Thanksgiving week. It was stupid, Steve thought. Thanksgiving didn’t even hold some special meaning for him. He had never really celebrated it. Sure, when his Ma could, they might have scraped up a little something extra for the day and with him and Bucky, there might have been the remains of a turkey, but it wasn’t as big of a deal when surviving day to day was so hard. Throughout most of his life, he had been mostly thankful that he had anything to eat at all.

But his recent upswing turned downwards. He wasn’t sure what happened, it wasn’t logical, but he had been feeling listless and hopeless all week and by Thanksgiving day he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed. He at least promised himself that he wouldn’t try to kill himself again; he told himself repeatedly that he had many reasons to want to be alive, but the despair gnawed through him so he just buried himself in his covers and hoped he would feel better soon. He tried not to think about how much he wanted to die.

He was somewhat expecting the quiet knock on his door, but he wasn’t expecting Pepper Potts to poke her head through (he had locked the door so he knew it was definitely JARVIS helping). He felt embarrassed that she saw him this way, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, so he just settled for avoiding eye contact.

“Steve, are you coming to dinner?”

He shook his head and he was worried for a moment that she wouldn’t be able to tell, but she said,

“Alright,” and closed the door behind her. That went a lot easier than he expected. Or at least, he thought so, until about a half-hour later the door opened and the entire team, including James Rhodes, Pepper and Jane Foster, came in holding food in various containers. Everyone settled around the floor beside his bed and he sat up, confused and bewildered.

“Guys, I’m not…I’m not great dinner company right now. You didn’t have to do this,” he frowned, wishing they wouldn’t waste their nice meal on him.  

“Why wouldn’t we want to feast with our shield brother? This day is a time for friends and family, is it not?” Thor asked.

“Yeah, but—”

“We weren’t going to let you spend your first Thanksgiving in the future alone, Cap,” Natasha said.

“But—”

“No buts Cap, you’re stuck with us,” said Clint.

“I don’t deserve this,” Steve admitted softly. The room was quiet for a moment before Tony said,

“How about you let us be the proprietors of what you can and can’t deserve. Anyone who thinks Steve doesn’t deserve food with his friends say ‘aye.’”

When no one said anything, Tony grinned, “See? Yeah, totally ridiculous.”

Steve shook his head, “It’s not that simple.”

“Steve,” Pepper cut in primly, “When was the last time you ate?”

Steve was caught off guard and flushed. It had been at least twelve hours since that was the last time he left his room.

“Exactly. There’s no use wasting all this food when you’re hungry and we’re already here.”

Steve shot her a look; that was playing dirty and she knew it. Case in point, Rhodey smiled beside her.

“I think that’s Pepper talk for ‘take the damn food and be grateful.’ I’d listen to her.”

Steve sighed, clearly defeated and outnumbered. “Alright. What have we got?”

And then Jane, who had been mostly quiet, launched into an explanation of all the very traditional Thanksgiving food they had (mostly for Thor’s sake since it was his first Thanksgiving as well) and it didn’t seem particularly appetizing until he got a spoonful of mash potatoes in his mouth and he realized he was starving. He ate four helpings of everything (the team seemed to anticipate this because there was a lot of food). He had to fight Thor for the last bit of turkey but he lost.

When they all settled down with dessert he noticed that Tony, Pepper and Rhodey were talking quietly (he could hear it, but he was going to give them the illusion of privacy), Clint and Natasha kept nudging each other and stealing food off of each other’s plates and Thor had Jane practically sitting in his lap. Bruce caught Steve’s eye and scooted closer to him, which made Steve unusually pleased. He was still a little sad but he was warm like he hadn’t been in a long time.

‘Thank you,’ he mouthed at Bruce and Bruce smiled back.

\--o0o--

“I think we should finally talk about your crash,” Dr. Wei said after the break, immediately bringing Steve’s mood back down.

“That’s um…” Difficult? Too stressful? He really didn’t have an excuse that didn’t sound cowardly.

“We don’t have to talk about it, I just think we should.” And she was affixing him with this look that told him it was in his best interests to think about it too.

He sighed and leaned back into his chair, “What do you want to know?”

“You don’t have to talk about it, like I said, but it would be a good start for you to describe it.”

Steve sighed again and wished, not for the first time, the serum hadn’t given him an eidetic memory.

“Well, as you probably know, I was piloting Red Skull’s plane after he was sucked into a portal by the Tesseract. Well, you might not know that part; that part may actually be classified. Um. Anyway, there were a lot of specialized bombs on the plane and it was headed for New York so I had to take it away from as many people as possible, to the arctic essentially.

I called my—my friend, Peggy Carter. I didn’t get to say that I loved her, but I promised that we would go dancing afterwards. I don’t know why I told her that. I guess to comfort her? I didn’t want her to think of me as dead for some reason.”

Steve took a deep breath and forced himself to continue, “Anyway, um, I crashed. I thought it would be like a big explosion that I wouldn’t have to deal with long ‘cause I’d be dead. But it wasn’t. It was slow and cold.” Steve shivered and tried to slow down his breathing because he was going to panic at this rate, “I-I couldn’t move or anything and water came up and I guess I drowned—”

_Steve was trapped; the body of the plane was warped around him and the freezing water slowly made it past his knees, his chest, and then his neck._

“Steve?” Dr. Wei’s voice pulled him out of the cold, "Stay with me Steve.”

Steve blinked, slowly becoming aware. “What? Oh. Yeah, I—drowned and then I woke up in the future.”

“And you still have nightmares about this?” Steve nodded. “What do you think it is about this experience that bothers you the most?”

“I guess the cold? I could handle thinking I was about to die, but I was so cold for so long. Sometimes I feel like if I get too cold, it’ll happen again, or sometimes it feels like I just got out of the ice.”

“And how have you been coping with this winter weather?”

Steve rubbed the back of his head ruefully, “Not well. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I tend to bulk up in warm clothing if I have to go outside. And when I get back to the Tower I’ll probably take a hot shower.” He left out the part that he would probably be burning himself without the serum.

“You should focus on something again to keep you in the present. You can use the same visual as last time, just focus on the here and now.”

“Alright.”

Dr. Wei tapped her chin before saying, “How about a little exercise? Whenever you feel like you aren’t in the present, I want you to write down your name, the date and time. Can you do that?”

“Yeah.”

“You mentioned a friend you were talking to during the crash? Did she pass away while you were asleep?”

“No?” Steve didn’t like where this was going.

“Have you gotten in touch with her?”

“Uh…”

Dr. Wei gave him a look and asked, “Would you like to get in touch with her?”

Steve shrugged, “I don’t wanna be a bother. She’s probably moved on with her life. The last thing she needs is me dredging up the past.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do either way, but it might be good for you to connect with someone from your time.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said.

\--o0o--

It was a bad idea, Steve knew it. He should have heeded his own advice instead of deciding to visit Peggy. He had trouble (was too afraid of) calling her, but found out she had an apartment in Brooklyn and had mostly lived there since he went in the ice. Outside of her doorstep with a bouquet, he worked up the courage to knock on her door.

‘Come on Rogers,’ he told himself, ‘If you can face alien invaders you can face this.’

So he sighed and finally knocked. It took a while, but the door finally opened and Steve was frozen for a moment as all of his memories of Peggy collided with this now elderly portrait of her.

“Well,” Peggy said with raised eyebrows, “after all of this time and I don’t get ‘hello’?”

Steve startled out of his trance, embarrassed.

“Oh! I’m sorry, uh. These are for you,” He handed her the flowers and his mood fell when her expression didn’t change. For a moment, Steve was worried he had upset her.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” she said with a slow smile. “Not even physically.”

“Oh. Yeah. You look great though!”

“Flatterer,” she tisked. “Come on in, I’ll make us some tea.”

“No, I mean it,” he said as he followed her in and that was true. She might have aged, but she seemed spritely and still young in spirit.

“How have you been?” He asked when they were seated at the table, tea in front of them.

“I’ve been well,” she shrugged, “You probably know all about my boring old life, but after the war I worked with Howard on SHIELD and I did a lot of operative work, before settling down in the 80s as an occasional consultant. Not quite the same as saving the world from aliens, I hear.”

Steve shrugged, abashed, “It wasn’t anything. Just doing what I was supposed to.”

“Well, I hope you’ve taken advantage of your youth and found a nice girl.”

He looked up, surprised. “No. I—I only woke up in April. I thought—I thought it was still the 40s at first. SHIELD set up this whole thing to make it look like it and I thought—” He cleared his throat and looked away. “I thought you would still be here waiting for me. But it was 70 years in the future and it felt like I just said goodbye a few hours before.”

Peggy looked sympathetic. “I take it the transition has been rough.”

“It hasn’t been easy, no. I’m glad you’re here, but I live with the guy and I still can’t believe Howard had a kid. I can’t believe any of this sometimes, I feel like one day I’m gonna wake up and this was all a dream and—”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, looking down at the table, “I know you and Erskine and hell, even Howard, all expected Captain America to be strong but I—”

“No, Steve,” Peggy interjected, “We expected Captain America to be a good man.”

She paused when he seemed taken aback and her eyes radiated with mischief, “You haven’t taken to stealing candy from babies lately, have you?”

Steve couldn’t help but smile, “No ma’am.”

“And you still hate bullies?”

He nodded.

“Then you still have the makings of Captain America,” She leaned forward and took his hands in her small frail ones, “No one blames you for having trouble adjusting and as long as you continue to do good things, we’re all proud of you.”

“But…” Steve looked away from her, ashamed, “I’m not who you thought I was, Peggy. I’m nothing like Captain America is supposed to be. I can’t even lead my team out to battle anymore, I-I’m _broken_ and that’s not Captain America.”

Peggy frowned, “This isn’t just about adjusting is it?”

Steve shook his head and admitted softly, “I tried to kill myself,” and Peggy embraced him with a devastated expression.

“Oh _Steve_.”

“Sometimes I still want to die and I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he murmured into her shoulder.

“Steve Rogers, none of that makes you weak. You are one of the strongest people I know and if you’re trying to get better, that’s all that matters.”

“You think so?”

“Of course.”

He held onto her for a little while and let more tears slip past than he would readily admit and it was oddly liberating. He wiped his face when he pulled away and sheepishly said,

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I’m guessing you haven’t exactly opened up about that, have you?”

“Not really.”

She took his hand and smiled, “I know what might cheer you up. I do believe a dance is in order, Captain.”

He stood and marveled at how she was still able to make him feel better after all these years.

“Of course,” he managed to smile back.

She put on a CD and it was probably slower than what would have transpired originally and Steve had to be very careful not to step on her, but they finally danced. It was a simple sway back and forth, nothing that required any real skill on Steve’s part. Even though it wasn’t like how he thought it would be, he felt relieved, cathartic. It made him feel like he could put part of this behind him, that now that he had tangible proof that she had been happy, he could focus less on her.

He still loved her, of course, he probably always would. But this had given him some peace, like he could really let her go.

He kissed her on the cheek when they were done and she hugged him.

They talked for a few more hours before he realized it was getting dark and he had to get back before his teammates started worrying. Peggy hugged him again when he was at her doorstep and Steve asked,

“I’ll see you soon?”

She smiled, “Of course.”

He left her house somehow lighter and with a pep in his step and if he slept without a nightmare that night, that was just an added bonus.

\--o0o--

He met with his psychiatrist two days later and told her about his visit with Peggy. Dr. Wei didn’t gloat when he said that he was glad that he had done it but she did smile when he was done.

“I’m really glad you decided to follow my advice.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’…”

“But I think we should continue to work on dealing with your sensitivity to cold.”

“Oh.”

“You can talk about Ms. Carter more if you’d like—”

“No, I know,” Steve sighed. “I should stop stalling.”

“Have you tried the exercise I mentioned?”

Steve nodded.

“Well I want you to close your eyes and picture what happened as well as you can. If you feel like you’re losing yourself, you can use your old visual of Iron Man, but if that doesn’t work I want you to try the exercise, alright? Ready when you are.”

“I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be?”

“Then I want you to close your eyes and think about what happened in detail. If it becomes too much, we can stop, okay?”

Steve nodded warily and closed his eyes.

He had just said goodbye to Peggy. He didn’t get to say more before the nose of the plane rammed into the ice shelf, crumpling the plane around him. His teeth rattled as he tried his best not to panic. He didn’t want to die, not like this, not when there was still so much out there for him to accomplish.

(At first he hoped the jostling wouldn’t disturb the bombs on the plane and set them off, but when water touched his feet he began to hope otherwise.)

It was so cold. He tried to measure his breathing, tried to shiver in his cocoon of metal, but the water was up to his legs and they were bone chilled.

He was so cold. Frost must have covered his lips because they felt like numb attachments to his face as he forced breath out of them. The water was up to his chest and it was so cold it hurt and he was going to die. He was so cold.

It was up to his neck. He was so cold.

\--he was so cold

\--he was so cold

 -he—

“Steve?”

Steve shook out of the memory, embarrassed. He forgot he was supposed to be trying to focus on something else.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“No, it’s fine,” she said kindly. “Would it help if I spoke while you did this?”

He ventured, “Maybe?”

“Alright then. Close your eyes and picture the crash. I want you to focus on my voice.”

Steve closed his eyes and did that. He focused on the last part before his episode.

“Can you hear me?”

He nodded.

“What do you see?”

“Not much; it’s kind of dark, but I can make out the control panel and the um…water.”

“Where is the water now?”

“It’s around my chest.”

“How does that feel?”

“C-cold. Really, really cold. It hurts a lot.” Steve tried to force himself not to panic. He knew he was safe; Dr. Wei assured that.

“How do _you_ feel?”

"Mostly cold and numb, but um...scared because I’m about to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

"But you didn’t die, Steve.”

Steve opened his eyes, startled, “What?”

“You didn’t die,” she repeated, “You survived the experience.”

Steve frowned, “I know that.”

“Do you? You’ve told me you’ve struggled with feeling like you exist now. Is it because you feel like you died?”

Steve hunched his shoulders, “Sometimes? Maybe.”

“Maybe you should start looking back on your experience in the ice as one you’ll survive. It might take the dread away from the memory.”

“I can try, I guess.”

Dr. Wei smiled, “That’s all I ever ask.”

Then she made Steve go over the story again until he could think about it without panicking.

“It’s hard to detach ourselves from painful memories,” she had said once he confessed how terrified he had been to relive the moment, “But we can’t really process what happened if we don’t take a step back and clear the air of our emotions.”

Dr. Wei made him look at some videos of snow and ice, while Steve tried desperately to stay in his own mind. It was hard and it took a few sessions for him to even think about doing a thing like going outside in less than four layers of clothing, but he made progress. In fact, he made so much progress that he decided that it was as good a time as any to test the waters again—literally.

“You wanna go swimming with me?” He asked Thor one day while they were watching a documentary together about the rise and fall of the Soviet Union.

Thor frowned, “Can you swim?”

“Yeah I—do you know about the details surrounding my crash?”

“Nay, only that you saved countless lives doing so.”

Steve sighed and tried to say nonchalantly, “Right. Well, I crashed into ice. It was in the ocean and I drowned so…”

“So now you wish to conquer your fears through Stark’s pool?” Thor asked and at Steve’s tiny nod, Thor proclaimed, “That is a noble cause, my friend, and I will be glad help you!” He slapped Steve heartily on the shoulder and Steve chuckled weakly, wondering if he had made a huge mistake.

They regrouped after they had both put on swimming attire (after Steve assured Thor that it was indeed necessary that they wore them) and Steve stood still at the edge of the pool. He wasn’t afraid, just nervous was all. He could do this. Definitely.

“Would you like me to warm the pool Captain?” JARVIS asked from above when Steve continued to do nothing but stare at the water.

“No, you don’t—you don’t need to do that.”

Thor finally stepped up and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder,

“There’s no time like the present my friend. If you do not feel yourself up to this, then I will not think of you any less.”

“No I—” Steve winced and looked at the pool with trepidation, “I can do this.”

Steve took the first step and shut his eyes to fight against the rising panic inside of him.

“Would it help if I held your hand?” Thor asked and Steve’s pride told him to refuse but his panic was winning the battle.

"….Yes, thank you.”

Thor nodded solemnly and took Steve’s hand. His grip was strong and made Steve feel a million times better, like he wasn’t actually going to drown. They took it step by step until the water was up to Steve’s stomach. The water was cool and rushing against his body with each movement and he tried not to notice how closely Thor was watching him.

He wasn’t in the wreck, he knew that. He was in Stark Tower. It was December 12th 2012 and he was not about to die. He kept repeating that to himself until they got to the slope for the deep end. It was a big drop, Steve knew, and he and Thor turned towards each other at the same time, sensing that one of them was going to have to let go.

“I can do this,” Steve asserted and pulled his hand away. He repeated his mantra in his head— _He was in Stark Tower. It was December 12_ _ th_ _2012 and he was not about to die_ —as he made stroke upon stroke in the water. He glided through it and tried his best not to think that if he stopped swimming he would sink to the bottom. He kept doing it until suddenly he realized that he had reached the opposite wall of the pool.

He looked back at Thor who was grinning proudly and Steve felt his heart beat faster of sudden elation. He did it. He couldn’t believe it, but he did it. Steve soon found himself returning Thor’s grin.

He took a deep breath and swam back to Thor. It was easier the second time and, when he was standing on the shallow side, Thor clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good job comrade!”

Steve tried to shrug like it was no big deal and said, “Well I probably still have a long ways to go. I should probably try to swim the length of the pool.”

Thor looked at him, still smiling, with a gleam in his eye and asked, “Would you care to race?”

Steve couldn’t believe that Thor had that much faith in him and he nodded, “Yeah, I’d like that.”

They raced, best two out of three, and Thor won two after Steve one the first one (one he still wasn’t sure whether or not Thor let him win), but he forgot about his fears for the moment and was laughing the whole time.

\--o0o-- 

Christmas was around the corner and for the first time in a long time, Steve was excited about his future prospects. He had been doing well in therapy, he saw a movie with the group that had shooting in it and was barely bothered, and it had always been an important time of the year for him. While he wasn’t always able to give his loved ones what they wanted (and neither were they to him), he did like that sometimes when they had a little extra money, they could get a small ham and he knew that his mother would penny pinch as much as she could for the end of the year to make it as special as she could.

Even when it was just him and Bucky, Steve did his best to cook something nice and they went out of their way to get the best gifts with their money limitations.

But now that Steve had money, he could treat his new family as much as he liked and the usual dread about so much time passing since the ice didn’t even enter his mind.

On Christmas day, he was woken up by JARVIS telling him that everyone was already in the commons waiting to open their presents. Apparently most of the Avengers hadn’t exactly had normal Christmases before (especially Thor) and they were as giddy as children more or less.

In the commons a huge Christmas tree had been erected with traditional ornaments as well as Avengers themed ones. It was garish and tacky, but nice. JARVIS had a video of a fireplace playing on one of the televisions and Tony rubbed his hands together impatiently when Steve entered the room.

“Come on, Cap, don’t take all day!”

Steve almost went slower just to spite him.

Everyone told Steve he had to open his presents last so he was content to watch everyone else as they opened their own. He got a music box with a ballerina in it for Natasha. He saw it walking home one day from therapy in an antique shop and it made him think of her.

He got Clint a set of carving knives because the other had taken up carving recently (mostly to quickly make arrows when he needed them but other things too) and partially so he would stop using the kitchen knives and ruining them.

He got Bruce a tea set. It came in a medium sized box with all sorts of blends of teas full of spices and leaves he had never heard of but hoped the other liked.   

He gave Thor a painting of Dr. Foster he had been working on in his free time. He had been studying what Norse (and hopefully Asgardian) clothing had looked like and painted her in them. He wasn’t sure if it was right or not, but Thor’s bone crushing hug afterwards told him it didn’t matter.

He got Pepper a pair of sapphire earrings, although he wasn’t sure how to interpret the look Tony had given him and he got Tony a bunch of Iron Man socks.

“What the fuck?” Tony exclaimed as he went through the dozen or so pairs of them and Steve laughed.

“What did you expect Tony? It’s not like you don’t buy yourself anything you actually want. Plus Pepper said that you need more socks without holes in them.”

It was even funnier when it turned out that everyone else had bought Tony socks too.

Then finally, Steve opened his own presents and was overwhelmed. Clint gave him a bracelet made out of bullet casings and learned that those were the casings from when Steve finally took a few shots himself at their weekly range sessions.

Thor got him blue and white Asgardian robes apparently spawned by Steve’s sudden interest in Asgardian fashion and they both laughed at the misunderstanding.

Bruce got him a set of soft and oil pastels—which he had said he had wanted to try—and a book on art history.

Tony made him a watch—a real one that didn’t measure his body’s feedback to the external environment or track him—that was in the color of his shield. Although the watch did have a distress signal that Steve could activate if he was in danger.

Pepper got him a picture of his old neighborhood in Brooklyn, framed, and restored to color digitally and Steve had to take a moment because of all the memories that flooded back to him. He stared at it for a long time and tried his best to discreetly wipe away a tear or two before thanking Pepper.

“I’ve got the best for last,” Natasha said as she shoved her box into his hands when he had finally calmed down.

“Debatable,” Tony muttered.

Steve opened the gift and it was a full shaving kit, with special brushes and lotions and an expensive looking single bladed razor. He looked up and saw her watching him with uncertainty (unnoticeable to anyone who didn’t know her) and he quickly thanked her.

“That was actually a really good segue,” Tony started, “because we, as a team, decided that your restriction on dangerous items is no longer necessary. Merry Christmas, Cap!”

Steve frowned, “What?”

Pepper stepped in, “You’ve been doing well for a while, you’ve come a long way since the ban started, and we think that you don’t need it anymore.”

Natasha smirked beside her, “You can shave by yourself now.”

Steve just nodded numbly, not sure what to say. He was taken by surprise. It was a good thing. The team was officially giving him his independence back. He didn’t know why the thought distressed him.

Other people came over for Christmas dinner: Jane Foster and her assistant Darcy, Eric Selvig, James Rhodes, even Coulson—briefly. Steve stewed over his thoughts during dinner. If people thought he seemed distracted they didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until much later, when he was cooking a second dinner for his metabolism that it began to feel odd to hold a knife with no one around him.     

Steve stared at the knife before him apprehensively. He supposed that he should be happy about his new allowances in the tower, but he was mostly overwhelmed at the trust his teammates gave him. He was so busy staring, he didn’t notice Bruce approaching until he heard the other say,

"I don’t think it’s going to work if you just keep staring at it."

Steve jumped and his cheeks flushed. “Oh—sorry,” he said and resumed chopping up the tomatoes for the soup he was making.

Bruce leaned against the counter and watched for a while before commenting, “You don’t seem too happy about this.”

Steve set the knife down and shook his head, “I’m not. I mean, I’m glad to be able to do things again without restrictions, but I feel like you guys’ faith in me is a little misplaced.”

Bruce frowned, “Is that because you think you’re going to hurt yourself again?”

Steve looked up, “No! I mean….I don’t know. I haven’t wanted to, not really, but I don’t know if the urge will ever come back,” then he looked away and muttered, “I don’t even know if I could even accomplish anything with a knife if a bullet didn’t work.”

Bruce hummed thoughtfully, “I have some exercises and techniques you could use if you ever feel like hurting yourself again. I’ve found them to be particularly helpful.”

Steve turned sharply at the other, “You—”

"Not since the other guy," Bruce shrugged, sounding distinctly bitter, "not counting that time I told you about. I don’t exactly have the privilege to bleed wherever I want because of how radioactive my blood is and Hulk doesn’t take too kindly to attempts on my life."

Steve began to feel awful; he had known about that one attempt, but the thought that Bruce had continuously tried to harm himself left his stomach cold. “And now? Do you still want to?”

Bruce shook his head, “No, not really. That part of my life is behind me. Even before the other guy, I was a mess. I don’t really feel like going into it, but I tried to hurt myself a lot. I—” He looked away, “I just know what it’s like to not be able to trust yourself. And I do mean what I said: if you feel like hurting yourself, come to me. I can show you how to deal.”

Steve gave a watery smile and said softly, “Thanks.”

\--o0o--

It was going well until New Year’s Eve. Tony decided to throw a small party on the roof of the Tower and it was okay. There were some SHIELD personnel, including Coulson and Maria Hill, some various people that the team knew. Steve was a little uncomfortable in his suit and he didn’t feel particularly chatty with the people he didn’t know, but it was _okay_. Everyone was drinking and having a good time and it wasn’t about him, so he didn’t have the right to feel lonely in his own skin.

It was only when he went inside to get a drink that apparently the clock struck twelve, and the fireworks started. Realistically, he should have been prepared for them, but he dropped his drink, startled.

His hands were shaking when he bent down to pick up the broken glass. He couldn’t breathe; his heart was beating hard and it felt like the world was closing in on him (all he could hear was the _BOOM!....crackle!_ of the fireworks outside), but he could only think that someone would come in and step on the glass and hurt themselves.

But then someone was tugging on his arm with a soft, “Come on” and he looked up and saw Pepper.

“One of the bots will get it, it’s okay,” she said and guided him out of the room into the adjacent kitchen and sat him down in a chair.

“Steve, you’re hyperventilating.”

He didn’t even realize it, just the constricting tightness in his chest.

“Oh—sorry,” he said through gasps and Pepper gave him a concerned look, one that was usually reserved for Tony.

“Don’t—you know what? Just try to breathe okay? I’ll get you some water.”

Steve did as she told. He remembered what Dr. Wei told him and tried to take deep even breaths. She came back with a glass of water and he was grateful for the distraction. He felt her eyes on him as he took a long sip and he was completely expecting it when she asked,

“Are you going to be alright?”

“Yeah I—I was just startled is all. Fireworks sound like a whole lotta other explosions.”

She frowned, a pinched look that said that he hadn’t exactly given her the answer that she wanted.

“I’m fine, Ms. Potts,” he smiled to reassure her, “I promise.”

“First of all, how many times have I told you to call me Pepper? And second of all, it’s not like I’m new to this. I’ve had about of dozen conversations like this with Tony and I know you aren’t fine.”

“Well, I’m getting better,” he offered instead, wondering distantly how often Pepper had had to soothe Tony’s nerves. He knew the guy was a virtual wreck after something that happened in Afghanistan, but he didn’t know the specifics, other than he came out with the arc reactor in his chest.

She hesitated before putting her hand on his shoulder. “I’m here if you need me, Steve. I may not be as super as everyone in the vicinity but I know a thing or two about helping with a panic attack.”

“Thank you,” he said sincerely, “I appreciate it.”

She ruffled his hair affectionately, “Don’t mention it.”

\--o0o--

He ended up starting his New Year on a low note. After the party, he crashed emotionally. It seemed to finally occur to him that this was another year that he would be away from his friends, that he was even further from them now than he was when he first woke up. He hadn’t felt this devastated in a while.

He ended up staying in bed all of New Year’s day with a hollow feeling in his chest. His team seemed to accept this and left him alone. He briefly had a thought about ending it all, but banished it from his mind as soon as it came. He was better than that now—he was _getting_ better, even if this setback didn’t feel like it.

The next day he sought out Bruce because, while the immediacy of wanting to stop being in the future had faded, he felt groundless and non-existent, which in some ways could be just as bad as not wanting to be there at all. He had knocked on Bruce’s door and when the other answered it, a little surprised to see him there, he sheepishly explained,

“I’m having a bad day.”

And Bruce had immediately understood and let him in with a small smile. They went over a few techniques, mostly breathing and yoga poses, but also holding ice until he felt real and drawing on himself in marker and washing it off until he felt better.

It helped a lot. Bruce also told him that he should try to concentrate on something and he figured it was no time like the present to break out those pastels. He ended up spending the rest of the day drawing and chasing that familiar darkness from his mind.

\--o0o--

He thought he was doing okay. Not perfect, but coping. His appointments with Dr. Wei had been gradually slowing down, and he had been handling his triggers well, but he wasn’t expecting to be called into Fury’s office one day and told that he could go back out in the field if he wanted to.

“But—”

“Do you not _want_ to go back in the field?” Fury asked as he leveled Steve with a stare.

“Well, I do but I don’t think—”

“Agent Romanoff said that you’ve been doing well. Almost like you’re getting better or something. But I’m sure the Avengers can handle more bad publicity when Stark can’t keep Banner on a leash.”

Steve frowned and then squinted at Fury, “Is that reverse psychology? Because I’ve been in the future long enough to know that doesn’t work.”

Fury ignored him, “I feel like I should also mention that you aren’t being placed back into combat.”

“What?”

Fury rolled his eye, “Did you really think we would put you back into the field ready to suit up after your vacation? No, you’re still leading from the sidelines until we know you can handle being back in combat again. Even for that, your psychiatrist will have to sign off on a form saying you’re fit for it.”

“Oh.”

“Believe it or not Cap we would like you to be as well-adjusted as possible. We failed you in those regards before.”

“Are you…apologizing?”

“Do you want to go back in the field or not?”

Steve took a deep breath. He figured there was no time like the present. “Yes, I do.”

“Alright. We’ll send a form for your psychiatrist and if she signs it. Well, welcome back Cap.”

Steve nodded and Fury dismissed him.

He wasn’t sure how to take the whole conversation. He kept wondering if he really was ready to step out in the field again, even though he would only be leading and not fighting. It felt sudden, the decision to let him lead again, almost like he didn’t deserve it, not after how he let the team down before. He expressed his concerns with Dr. Wei who asked,

“Are you worried that you won’t be able to do your job properly?”

Steve shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess. I just feel like I’m going to let everyone down again.”

“Have you considered that you didn’t let anyone down before? I’m not saying that I’m an expert in combat, but I know that things can go wrong all the time and I doubt your teammates found it to be your fault.”

“I guess.”

“You don’t have to go into combat if you don’t want to, but maybe speaking with your teammates will help assuage any fears you have.”

Steve chewed the inside of his mouth and said, “Yeah, okay.” 

When he got back to the tower he wasn’t expecting the general agreement that he should lead again.

He frowned, “But aren’t you all worried that I’ll just fail you again?”

Natasha put her hand on his shoulder, “Steve, you didn’t fail us. You weren’t well and you’ve gotten better.”

“Plus we want you back,” Clint added, “Absolutely no one wants Tony to be team captain anymore.”

Tony scowled, “I am a _wonderful_ leader.”

Steve turned to Bruce, “What do you think?”

Bruce shrugged, “I think you should do whatever makes you comfortable. If you don’t think you’re ready, you can take more time.”

“I’m just…I just feel like I’ll mess up again.”

“Look: I’ll be honest with you, Cap,” Tony said, “Shit happens in battle all the time. Shit you can’t predict. Will something eventually go wrong? Yeah, probably. But you can’t freak yourself out about the possibility and you can’t beat yourself when it does happen.”

Steve looked up at Tony with a small smile, “Wise words.”

Tony shrugged, looking away, “Yeah, well. I might have heard something like that from a certain Captain.”

“Need I remind everyone that Steve does not have to stay permanently in the field,” Thor chimed in,

“He may go out in a trial period and if he so wishes he can stay in his duties.”

Steve hadn’t thought of that. He nodded, “Alright.”

\--o0o--

Dr. Wei’s big red stamp on his form seemed oddly permanent and he was no less nervous suiting up, even though it was all superficial. It did feel good putting on the suit again, as form fitting as it was. Clint gave him a thumbs up when they boarded the quintjet and Steve gave a less enthused one back. They were heading to Ohio to deal with a robot army swarm. Where exactly the robots came from was anyone’s guess, but they were flipping over cars and doing loads of unnecessary damage.

No one had been killed by the bots yet and Steve hoped to keep it that way.

Steve felt weird not being able to do anything, but give orders and for the first time in a long time, he felt ready to fight. As it were, he simply commanded his team. The robots fell easily with a high enough voltage so he had Tony and Natasha corral the bots into open areas where Clint would use a net arrow to nab groups of them together and Thor would electrocute them. Hulk smashed them as they came and Steve mostly left Hulk to his own devices.

Aside from the property damage, it didn’t go terribly. Steve couldn’t put into words how relieved he was. When they were done, Thor pulled him into a hug and ruffled his hair and Steve couldn’t hide how big his smile was.

“Great work, Cap,” Natasha said when they had loaded back into the jet.

“Thanks,” Steve grinned, abashed.

There were two more calls to assemble like that (the latter of the two even involved someone shooting and Steve didn’t even freeze up at all) before Fury let Steve go back into active combat.

It was different, actually fighting for once, instead of being on the sidelines, but it was a welcome change. They were fighting giant mutant turtles (Clint kept asking if they were teenage ninjas and Steve just rolled his eyes because he finally got the reference and it was just as lame as he thought it would be) and it felt ridiculously good to knock his shield into a turtle’s face. He thought he might have been rusty, but the serum seemed to pick up any slack he might have had otherwise.

They managed to defeat them and their misguided scientist with minimal damage and maximum wisecracks and Steve knew that it wouldn’t always be this easy, but he felt grateful and useful, which was more than he had felt in a long time.

\--o0o--

A few missions later, Steve and Thor found themselves eating at a diner for lunch one bright spring day. Steve probably would never catch up on every little thing he had missed, but he was always happy to find new places to eat at and Thor was basically happy wherever there was food. Whenever they ate together, they also tended to go big with their food orders which made them both great and terrible customers.

This was the case now, with Steve ordering a whole pot pie to himself and Thor working on three burgers and that was before drinks, sides, and desserts. Halfway through his chocolate shake, Steve noticed two kids nudging each other and staring at Thor. Eventually, the little girl took charge and marched towards Thor, other boy in tow, with a coloring sheet and a crayon.

“Are you Thor?” The girl asked when they reached Steve and Thor’s table. They hadn’t seemed to notice Steve, but Thor did attract more attention in public no matter what.

Thor grinned, “Why yes I am, little one. And what is your name?”

“I’m Melinda. This is Ken. He didn’t believe me when I said it was you.”

“Well it is I,” Thor said kindly, “And this is my friend, Captain America.”

Both heads swiveled around as they seemed to notice Steve. Their eyes grew huge and the boy spoke for the first time,

“Whoa! You’re Captain America?”

Steve smiled, “That’s right.”

The girl frowned, “But where did you go? My daddy said that you weren’t an Avenger for a long time.”

When Steve’s smile faltered at that, Thor came to the rescue, “Steven here was sick for a long time which is why he was not able to fight amongst us.”

The girl and the boy’s faces turned worried at that and the boy asked, “Like the flu?”

Steve shook his head, “Not like the flu. It got really bad, but I’m a lot better now.”

The girl asked, “Does that mean you’re going to be an Avenger forever now?”

Steve laughed, “Kind of.”

Melinda and Ken seemed to suddenly remember why they came over and she thrust their coloring sheet in Thor’s direction, asking for an autograph from both of them. When they left, Steve told Thor,

“Thanks for helping out there."

Thor smiled, “It was no problem, my friend.”

They began eating again in silence and Steve thought about how far he had come since he first woke up, how he never thought he would be able to say that he was better than he had been. It had been a long journey to this point and it would probably be a long journey after, but even though he was far from obtaining a perfect state of mind, he was better.

He slurped up the last bit of his milkshake and he thought about how delicious it was, what a beautiful day to drink a milkshake in the 21st century and it was good.


End file.
